1. Home

MySQL WHERE Clause

The WHERE clause is used to filter records

The MySQL WHERE Clause

The WHERE clause is used to filter records.

It is used to extract only those records that fulfill a specified condition.

WHERE Syntax

SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name
WHERE condition;

Note: The WHERE clause is not only used in SELECT statements, it is also used in UPDATE, DELETE, etc.!

Demo Database

Below is a selection from the "Customers" table in the Northwind sample database:

CustomerID CustomerName ContactName Address City PostalCode Country
1

 Alfreds Futterkiste Maria Anders Obere Str. 57 Berlin 12209 Germany
2 Ana Trujillo Emparedados y helados Ana Trujillo Avda. de la Constitución 2222 México D.F. 05021 Mexico
3 Antonio Moreno Taquería Antonio Moreno Mataderos 2312 México D.F. 05023 Mexico
4

 Around the Horn Thomas Hardy 120 Hanover Sq. London WA1 1DP UK
5 Berglunds snabbköp Christina Berglund Berguvsvägen 8 Luleå S-958 22 Sweden

WHERE Clause Example

The following SQL statement selects all the customers from "Mexico":

Example

SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE Country = 'Mexico';

Text Fields vs. Numeric Fields

SQL requires single quotes around text values (most database systems will also allow double quotes).

However, numeric fields should not be enclosed in quotes:

Example

SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE CustomerID = 1;

Operators in The WHERE Clause

The following operators can be used in the WHERE clause:

Operator Description Example
= Equal Try it
> Greater than Try it
< Less than Try it
>= Greater than or equal Try it
<= Less than or equal Try it
<> Not equal. Note: In some versions of SQL this operator may be written as != Try it
BETWEEN Between a certain range Try it
LIKE Search for a pattern Try it
IN To specify multiple possible values for a column Try it

Test Yourself With Exercises

Exercise:

Select all records where the City column has the value "Berlin".

SELECT * FROM Customers
  = ;

Start the Exercise

Categories

HTML CSS3 Bootstrap Foundation Sass JavaScript TypeScript JQuery AngularJS React NodeJS Highcharts PHP Python Python3 Django Linux Docker Ruby Java C C ++ Perl Servlet JSP Lua Scala Go ASP C # SQL MySQL SQLite MongoDB Redis Android Swift ionic Kotlin XML tutorial

Contact US