MySQL SELECT only not null values

You can filter out rows that contain a NULL value in a specific column:

SELECT col1, col2, ..., coln
FROM yourtable
WHERE somecolumn IS NOT NULL

If you want to filter out rows that contain a null in any column then try this:

SELECT col1, col2, ..., coln
FROM yourtable
WHERE col1 IS NOT NULL
AND col2 IS NOT NULL
-- ...
AND coln IS NOT NULL

Update: Based on your comments, perhaps you want this?

SELECT * FROM
(
    SELECT col1 AS col FROM yourtable
    UNION
    SELECT col2 AS col FROM yourtable
    UNION
    -- ...
    UNION
    SELECT coln AS col FROM yourtable
) T1
WHERE col IS NOT NULL

And I agre with Martin that if you need to do this then you should probably change your database design.


You should use IS NOT NULL. (The comparison operators = and <> both give UNKNOWN with NULL on either side of the expression.)

SELECT * 
FROM table 
WHERE YourColumn IS NOT NULL;

Just for completeness I'll mention that in MySQL you can also negate the null safe equality operator but this is not standard SQL.

SELECT *
FROM table 
WHERE NOT (YourColumn <=> NULL);

Edited to reflect comments. It sounds like your table may not be in first normal form in which case changing the structure may make your task easier. A couple of other ways of doing it though...

SELECT val1 AS val
FROM  your_table
WHERE val1 IS NOT NULL
UNION ALL
SELECT val2 
FROM  your_table
WHERE val2 IS NOT NULL
/*And so on for all your columns*/

The disadvantage of the above is that it scans the table multiple times once for each column. That may possibly be avoided by the below but I haven't tested this in MySQL.

SELECT CASE idx
         WHEN 1 THEN val1
         WHEN 2 THEN val2
       END AS val
FROM   your_table
        /*CROSS JOIN*/
       JOIN (SELECT 1 AS idx
                   UNION ALL
                   SELECT 2) t
HAVING val IS NOT NULL  /*Can reference alias in Having in MySQL*/