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Importance of WHERE 1 in MySQL queries

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When making a MySQL query with no WHERE constraints, most people use WHERE 1 in the query. However, omitting WHERE 1 does not influence the query. Is there a difference between the two? Is one considered to be the best practice?

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Brian Avatar asked Dec 31 '09 02:12

Brian


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2 Answers

I don't think it's a matter of best practice, but people sometimes use it to make building dynamic queries a bit easier.

string sql = "SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE 1 "; if ( somecondition ) {    sql += "AND somefield = somevalue "; }  if ( someothercondition ) {    sql += "AND someotherfield = someothervalue "; }  ... etc 

Without the WHERE 1 in there I would need to check in each if block whether I needed to put in a WHERE or an AND.

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Eric Petroelje Avatar answered Oct 10 '22 19:10

Eric Petroelje


It's not necessary. 99.9% of the time it just means the query was dynamically constructed and putting in WHERE 1 leads to simpler logic for dynamic conditional clauses, meaning you can just keep adding AND id = 3 to the end of the query and it won't break the syntax. If you don't have WHERE 1 you have to worry about whether or not there's a WHERE clause and whether to prepend your condition with AND or not.

So it's just laziness basically.

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cletus Avatar answered Oct 10 '22 19:10

cletus