MySQL - find rows where column is empty string (blank)

In this article, we would like to show you how to find rows where the column value is an empty string in MySQL.

Quick solution:

SELECT * FROM `table_name` WHERE `column_name` = '';

If your column is NULL then the below query works:

SELECT * FROM `table_name` WHERE `column_name` IS NULL;

Practical example

To show how to find rows where the column value is an empty string, we will use the following table:

Note:

At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.

Example

In this example, we will find rows from users table with empty email column.

Query:

SELECT *
FROM `users`
WHERE `email` = '';

Result:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE `users` (
	`id` INT(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
	`name` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	`surname` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	`email` VARCHAR(50),
	PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO `users`
	( `name`, `surname`, `email`)
VALUES
	('John', 'Stewart', 'john@email.com'),
	('Chris', 'Brown', ''),
	('Kate', 'Lewis',''),
	('Ailisa', 'Gomez', 'ailisa@email.com'),
	('Gwendolyn', 'James', ''),
	('Simon', 'Collins', ''),
	('Taylor', 'Martin',''),
	('Andrew', 'Thompson', 'andrew123@email.com');