Re: Providing an alternative result when there is no result

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 03:13:56PM -0400, Joshua Berry wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Is there an easy and efficient way to return a boolean false for a query
> that returns no result, and true for one that does return a result?
>
> Currently we select the result into a temp table.
>
> SELECT INTO temp_table id FROM ... ;
> IF temp_table IS NULL THEN
> resp:= 'NO';
> ELSE
> resp:= 'YES';
> END IF;

SELECT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM ....);

will get you a boolean which can't be NULL.  You can either map that
to "yes/no" or return it as is.

Hope this helps :)

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate