Need help selecting non-empty column values from MySQL

Question

I have a MySQL table which has about 30 columns. One column has empty values for the majority of the table. How can I use a MySQL command to filter out the items which do have values in the table?

Here is my attempt:

SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE column IS NOT NULL

This does not filter because I have empty cells rather that having NULL in the void cell.

Solution 1

Also look for the columns not equal to the empty string ''

SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE column IS NOT NULL AND column <> ''

If you have fields containing only whitespace which you consider empty, use TRIM() to eliminate the whitespace, and potentially leave the empty string ''

SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE column IS NOT NULL AND TRIM(column) <> ''

Solution 2

A alternate approach that also handles blank spaces in a column as well as null:

SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE TRIM(column) > ''

Comments

[Chris]

This worked really well for me - especially the TRIM() version. Thanks.

[Dante]

How can we use this in query instead of rawquery (android sqliteopenhelper)?

[aravind_reddy]

SELECT * FROM table WHERE column = "" worked for me