How to prevent MySQL GROUP BY from collapsing NULL values into a single row?

Fir this, you can use IFNULL() along with ORDER BY clause. Let us first create a table table −

mysql> create table DemoTable1511
   -> (
   -> Id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
   -> FirstName varchar(20)
   -> );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.97 sec)

Insert some records in the table using insert command −

mysql> insert into DemoTable1511(FirstName) values('John');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.20 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1511(FirstName) values('Robert');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.29 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1511(FirstName) values('Mike');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.10 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1511(FirstName) values('Robert');
Query OK, 1 row affected (1.08 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1511(FirstName) values(NULL);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.68 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1511(FirstName) values(NULL);
Query OK, 1 row affected (1.91 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1511(FirstName) values('Mike');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.51 sec)

Display all records from the table using select statement −

mysql> select * from DemoTable1511;

This will produce the following output −

+----+-----------+
| Id | FirstName |
+----+-----------+
|  1 | John      |
|  2 | Robert    |
|  3 | Mike      |
|  4 | Robert    |
|  5 | NULL      |
|  6 | NULL      |
|  7 | Mike      |
+----+-----------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Here is the query to prevent MySQL GROUP BY from collapsing NULL values into a single row −

mysql> select min(Id) as Id,FirstName from DemoTable1511 group by FirstName,ifnull(FirstName,Id) order by Id;

This will produce the following output −

+------+-----------+
| Id   | FirstName |
+------+-----------+
|    1 | John      |
|    2 | Robert    |
|    3 | Mike      |
|    5 | NULL      |
|    6 | NULL      |
+------+-----------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)