The SQL LEFT JOIN returns all rows from the left table, even if there are no matches in the right table. This means that if the ON clause matches 0 (zero) records in the right table; the join will still return a row in the result, but with NULL in each column from the right table.
This means that a left join returns all the values from the left table, plus matched values from the right table or NULL in case of no matching join predicate.
The basic syntax of a LEFT JOIN is as follows.
SELECT table1.column1, table2.column2... FROM table1 LEFT JOIN table2 ON table1.common_field = table2.common_field;
Here, the given condition could be any given expression based on your requirement.
Consider the following two tables,
Table 1 − CUSTOMERS Table is as follows.
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+ | ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY | +----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+ | 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 | | 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 | | 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 | | 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 | | 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 | | 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 | | 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 | +----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Table 2 − Orders Table is as follows.
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+ | OID | DATE | CUSTOMER_ID | AMOUNT | +-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+ | 102 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 3000 | | 100 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | 3 | 1500 | | 101 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 | 2 | 1560 | | 103 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 | 4 | 2060 | +-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
Now, let us join these two tables using the LEFT JOIN as follows.
SQL> SELECT ID, NAME, AMOUNT, DATE FROM CUSTOMERS LEFT JOIN ORDERS ON CUSTOMERS.ID = ORDERS.CUSTOMER_ID;
This would produce the following result −
+----+----------+--------+---------------------+ | ID | NAME | AMOUNT | DATE | +----+----------+--------+---------------------+ | 1 | Ramesh | NULL | NULL | | 2 | Khilan | 1560 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 | | 3 | kaushik | 3000 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | | 3 | kaushik | 1500 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 | | 4 | Chaitali | 2060 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 | | 5 | Hardik | NULL | NULL | | 6 | Komal | NULL | NULL | | 7 | Muffy | NULL | NULL | +----+----------+--------+---------------------+