Alex Rivera | Logout

Update Field When Not Null

Asked 2009-12-07T14:13:20.703
21

I have an update statement that updates fields x, y and z where id = xx.

In the table I have a few different x_created_datetime fields (for different portions of the record that are maintained/entered by different folks). I'd like to write a single query that will update this field if is null, but leave it alone if is not null.

So what I have is:

UPDATE newspapers
SET scan_notes = "data",
    scan_entered_by = "some_name",
    scan_modified_date = "current_unix_timestamp"
WHERE id = X

What I need is a way to add in the following, but still always update the above:

scan_created_date = "current_unix_timestamp"
where scan_created_date is null

I'm hoping I can do this without a second transaction to the DB. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

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2

You can do something like this:

UPDATE newspapers a, newspapers b
SET a.scan_notes = "data",    
  a.scan_entered_by = "some_name",    
  a.scan_modified_date = "current_unix_timestamp",
  b.scan_created_date = "current_unix_timestamp"
WHERE a.id = X AND b.id = X AND b.scan_created_date is not NULL
answered 2009-12-07T14:21:46.393

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