CASE

Definition

The CASE function allows you to perform conditional statements in BigQuery. This is a more complex implementation of IF.

Practical Info

• If you leave out an else_result, then the query will return NULL if not matched to the result
• result and else_result must be coercible to a common supertype.

Common Questions

How to create multiple 'THEN' clauses for a case statement?

To add multiple expression -> result pairings, simply add another WHEN ... THEN clause (without commas) to your function.

Using the example data above, we could use the following query to identify which are the primary colours:

CASE expr
WHEN expr_to_match THEN result
[...]
[ELSE else_result]
END

How to compare strings ignoring case?

SELECT
  colour,
  CASE WHEN colour IN ('blue', 'red', 'yellow') THEN true ELSE false END AS primary_colour
FROM
  (
    SELECT
      'blue' AS colour
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      'pink' AS colour)
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      'black' AS colour)
  ) AS table_3

To account for strings being of different cases, we can use UPPER and LOWER to standardise all of the cases in both our expressions to match, and the match criteria.

Using the data above, we could modify our case statement as follows:

CASE WHEN colour ='blue' THEN true
WHEN colour = 'red' THEN true
WHEN colour = 'yellow' then true
ELSE false
END AS primary_colour

How to compare dates using a case statement?

CASE
WHEN UPPER(colour) IN ('BLUE', 'RED', 'YELLOW') THEN true
ELSE false
END AS primary_colour

As long as your expressions are of the right type you can use comparison operators (e.g. >, <, >=) to compare dates:

CASE
WHEN date_col BETWEEN '2020-10-01' and '2021-09-30' THEN 'FY 2021'
WHEN date_col<'2020-10-01' then 'pre FY 2021'
END fiscal_date

How to Group By / Aggregate by a Case function

To group by the results of a CASE function, just make sure you add the name of the column to your GROUP BY clause.

To aggregate by a case column, make sure your results are numbers:

SELECT
  date_col,
  CASE WHEN (date_col BETWEEN '2020-10-01' AND '2021-09-30') THEN 'FY 2021' WHEN (date_col < '2020-10-01') THEN 'pre FY 2021' END AS fiscal_date
FROM
  (
    SELECT
      '2020-10-01' AS date_col
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      '2021-09-30' AS date_col)
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      '2019-10-01' AS date_col)
  ) AS table_3

Troubleshooting Common Errors

Type mismatch for operands of = operator: number and string.

This happens when your conditional expression is invalid. For example:

SELECT
  SUM(number),
  CASE WHEN city IN ('New York', 'Miami') THEN 'East' ELSE 'West' END AS Region
FROM
  (
    SELECT
      2 AS number,
      'New York' AS city
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      4 AS number,
      'Los Angeles' AS city)
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      (-3) AS number,
      'Miami' AS city)
  ) AS table_3
GROUP BY
  Region

You can resolve this by making sure your condition column and criteria are compatible types:

SELECT
  SUM(CASE WHEN city IN ('New York', 'Miami') THEN number ELSE 0 END) AS east_total,
  SUM(CASE WHEN city IN ('Los Angeles') THEN number ELSE 0 END) AS west_total
FROM
  (
    SELECT
      2 AS number,
      'New York' AS city
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      4 AS number,
      'Los Angeles' AS city)
    UNION ALL
(    SELECT
      (-3) AS number,
      'Miami' AS city)
  ) AS table_3

Case expression returns with mixed types are not supported.

This error occurs when your result types are different. In this example returning 1 in one case and 'hello' in another won't work.

CASE WHEN number_column = 'string' ....

To resolve this, make sure your result types are compatible and coercible.

Related Pages

• Data Types in Standard SQL

CASE WHEN CAST(number_column as STRING) = 'string' ...

CASE WHEN (CAST(bq.Avg_monthly_searches AS STRING) = 'total') THEN 1 ELSE 'hello' END

CASE WHEN (CAST(bq.Avg_monthly_searches AS STRING) = 'total') THEN '1' ELSE 'hello' END