Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the MySQL IN operator that determines if a specified value matches any value a list or a subquery.
Introduction to the MySQL IN Operator
The IN
operator allows you to determine if a specified value matches any one of a list or a subquery. The following illustrates the syntax of the IN
operator.
SELECT column_list FROM table_name WHERE (expr|column) IN ('value1','value2',...)
In the query above:
You can use a
column
or an expression (expr
) with theIN
operator in the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement.The values in the list must be separated by a comma (,)
The
IN
operator can also be used in theWHERE
clause of other statements such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, etc.
The IN
operator returns 1 if the value of the column
orthe result of the expr
expression is equal to any value in the list, otherwise it returns 0.
When the values in the list are all constants:
First, MySQL evaluates the values based on the type of the
column
or result of theexpr
.Second, MySQL sorts the values.
Third, MySQL searches for values using binary search algorithm which is very fast.
Therefore a query that uses the IN
operator with a list of constants will perform very fast.
If the expr
or any value in the list is NULL
, the IN
operator returns NULL
.
You can combine the IN
operator with the NOT
operator to determine if a value does not match any value in a list or a subquery.
Let’s practice with some examples of using the IN
operator.
MySQL IN examples
If you want to find out all offices which locates in the U.S. and France, you can use the IN
operator as the following query:
SELECT officeCode, city, phone FROM offices WHERE country IN ('USA','France')
You can achieve the same result with the OR
operator as the following query:
SELECT officeCode, city, phone FROM offices WHERE country = 'USA' OR country = 'France'
In case the list has many values, you have to construct a very long statement with multiple OR
operators. Hence the IN
operator allows you to shorten the query and make the query more readable.
To get offices that does not locate in USA and France, you can use NOT IN
in the WHERE
clause as follows:
SELECT officeCode, city, phone FROM offices WHERE country NOT IN ('USA','France')
MySQL IN with subquery
The IN
operator is often used with a subquery. For example, if you want to find order whose total amount is greater than $60K, you can use the IN
operator as the following query:
SELECT orderNumber, customerNumber, status, shippedDate FROM orders WHERE orderNumber IN ( SELECT orderNumber FROM orderDetails GROUP BY orderNumber HAVING SUM(quantityOrdered * priceEach) > 60000)
In this tutorial, we have shown you how to use MySQL IN
operator to determine if a value matches any value in a list or a subquery.