Usage of MySQL's "IF EXISTS"

Question

Here are two statements that I'd like to work, but which return error messages:

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM gdata_calendars WHERE `group` =  ? AND id = ?) SELECT 1 ELSE SELECT 0

and

IF ((SELECT COUNT(*) FROM gdata_calendars WHERE `group` =  ? AND id = ?) > 0)  SELECT 1 ELSE SELECT 0;

The question marks are there because I use parametrized, prepared, statements with PHP's PDO. However, I have also tried executing this with data manually, and it really does not work.

While I'd like to know why each of them doesn't work, I would prefer to use the first query if it can be made to work.

Answer 1

You cannot use IF control block OUTSIDE of functions. So that affects both of your queries.

Turn the EXISTS clause into a subquery instead within an IF function

SELECT IF( EXISTS(
             SELECT *
             FROM gdata_calendars
             WHERE `group` =  ? AND id = ?), 1, 0)

In fact, booleans are returned as 1 or 0

SELECT EXISTS(
         SELECT *
         FROM gdata_calendars
         WHERE `group` =  ? AND id = ?)