mysql join 2 tables with on condition , keep some values - mysql

Question

I have 2 tables.
users(id,username) and links(id,usernameORid).
Example of rows: users{ [1,test] , [2,stack] } and links{ [1,overflow] , [2, 1] }
So, table links may contain username or id from table users. As you can see in the example,
usernameORid from links may not contain the id or username from users.
I hope you understood my example.
Now, i have this query:
SELECT l.usernameORid, u.username, u.id
FROM links l
LEFT JOIN users u
ON l.usernameORid= u.id
LEFT JOIN user_roles ur
ON ur.userID = u.id
WHERE ur.roleID < 4
group by u.id
But this query does not return rows from links if usernameORid is not an actual username or id from users.
In the previous example, will not return row [1,overflow]. I want that row too.
How can i achieve that?
EDIT: The problem is partialy related to
LEFT JOIN user_roles ur
ON ur.userID = u.id
WHERE ur.roleID < 4
but still, how can i achieve that?
user_roles ( id,userID,roleID)

Answer 1

Change your final WHERE condition to:
WHERE ur.roleID < 4 OR u.id IS NULL
This will allow it to return rows that didn't have a match in users. Normally a LEFT JOIN does that by itself, but since you're doing an additional join on that table, the WHERE clause is filtering those non-matching rows out because they don't have a roleID.

Answer 2

You can use an OR statement in your join between links and users. This will allow you to pick up users records where the link.usernameORid is equal to either the users.id or the users.username
SELECT l.usernameORid,
u.username,
u.id
FROM links l
LEFT JOIN users u ON
l.usernameORid = u.id OR
lusernameORid = u.username
LEFT JOIN user_roles ur
ON ur.userID = u.id
WHERE ur.roleID < 4
GROUP BY u.id
This will still cause records to drop if the found users->user_roles.roleID is less than 4. If you wanted to have link records maintained regardless of whether of a user was found by username or ID then you would need to subquery the users and user_roles table joins and apply your WHERE statement there instead. This query is below:
SELECT
l.usernameORid,
u.username,
u.id
FROM links l
LEFT JOIN
(
SELECT
users.username,
users.idusers
FROM
users
LEFT JOIN user_roles ON
user_roles.userID = users.id
WHERE
user_roles.roleID < 4
) u ON
l.usernameORid= u.id OR
l.usernameORid = u.username
group by u.id
Furthermore, if you wish the 2nd or 3rd column of your return to hold the value that is in l.usernameORid when the users table lacks a match... if your users.id is always numeric you could do some trickery with a CASE statement:
SELECT
l.usernameORid,
Coalesce(u.username, CASE WHEN .lusernameORid REGEXP '^[0-9]+$' THEN NULL ELSE l.usernameORid END) as username,
Coalesce(u.username, CASE WHEN .lusernameORid REGEXP '^[0-9]+$' THEN l.usernameORid ELSE NULL END) as userid
FROM links l
LEFT JOIN
(
SELECT
users.username,
users.idusers
FROM
users
LEFT JOIN user_roles ON
user_roles.userID = users.id
WHERE
user_roles.roleID < 4
) u ON
l.usernameORid= u.id OR
l.usernameORid = u.username
group by u.id
Keep in mind though, that if the users table doesn't have a match for the links.usernameORid then only the username OR the id could be determined, so you will have a NULL in one of the two fields.