How to Concatenate Columns in PostgreSQL SELECT Statements While Handling NULL Values?

How to join columns and handle NULL values ​​in PostgreSQL SELECT statement?

Question:

You want to concatenate two string columns (a and b) in a PostgreSQL SELECT statement. However, direct concatenation using the || or ||, ' operator returns a NULL value.

Solution:

String type joins in PostgreSQL require at least one input to be of string type. For non-string data types, an explicit conversion to a text type is required for successful concatenation.

To join columns of string type, use the following syntax:

SELECT a || b AS ab FROM foo;

Alternatively, you can use the concat_ws() function to combine values ​​using optional delimiters:

SELECT concat_ws(', ', a, b) AS ab FROM foo;

For non-string data types, convert to text type before concatenation, as shown in the following example:

SELECT a::text || b AS ab FROM foo;

Function comparison:

• concat(): Concatenate multiple values ​​without using separators.
• concat_ws(): Concatenate values ​​using an optional delimiter, adding delimiters only between non-NULL values.

The function volatility of both concat() and concat_ws() is STABLE, which means that its results may change depending on the input data. For immutable functions, consider using techniques like custom immutable cloning or full-text search.

Additional notes:

• The
  • operator is not a valid string concatenation operator in PostgreSQL or standard SQL. It only works with Microsoft products.
• It is recommended to use text or varchar to store strings instead of character(n) or char(n) data types.

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