I want to create a function with optional arguments in MySQL. For instance, I want to create function that calculates the average of its arguments. I create a function of five arguments, but when user passes just two arguments to the function then it should still run and return the average of the two arguments.
While far from an ideal solution, here's how I solved optional parameters for a concat function I needed:
delimiter ||
create function safeConcat2(arg1 longtext, arg2 varchar(1023))
returns longtext
return safeConcat3(arg1, arg2, '');
||
create function safeConcat3(arg1 longtext, arg2 varchar(1023), arg3 varchar(1023))
returns longtext
return safeConcat4(arg1, arg2, arg3, '');
||
create function safeConcat4(arg1 longtext, arg2 varchar(1023), arg3 varchar(1023), arg4 varchar(1023))
returns longtext
begin
declare result longText;
set result = concat(arg1, arg2, arg3, arg4);
if( result is null) then
set result=arg1;
end if;
return result;
end
||
Note: This means you have to call the method that corresponds to the number of args.