Re: Always getting back a row, even with no results

Do smth like along the lines (might want to add additional code for ordering, this just happens to run correctly) :
select * from my_table where cat = 500 UNION select null,null LIMIT CASE WHEN (select count(*) from my_table where cat=500)>0 THEN (select count(*) from my_table where cat=500) ELSE 1 END ;
Of course you can write a function to do that for you, but what made you want this in the first place? Maybe this is bad design ?

Unfortunately this is a constraint of the environment; not good design, but SQL seems like it should be the simplest place to solve this.

I tried your example; it seems the ordering is required, otherwise the results always include the null. So the below works for anyone who finds this in the future. Thanks

select
id
from
my_table
where
cat = 2

UNION

select
null as id
ORDER BY
id ASC
LIMIT
CASE
WHEN (
select
count(*)
from
my_table
where
cat = 2
) > 0
THEN (
select count(*) from my_table where cat=2
)
ELSE
1
END;