How To Do a Full Outer Join in MySQL

MySQL does not support full outer join out of the box, unlike other databases such as PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. So you will need to do a full outer join using a combination of other join types such as LEFT JOIN ad RIGHT JOIN that are supported in MySQL. In this article, we will look at how to a full outer join in MySQL.

How To Do a Full Outer Join in MySQL

Here are the steps to do a full outer join in MySQL.

Let us say you have the following two tables sales and orders.

mysql> select * from sales;
 +------+---------------------+--------+
 | id   | order_date          | amount |
 +------+---------------------+--------+
 |    1 | 2021-02-02 08:15:00 |    250 |
 |    2 | 2021-02-02 08:30:00 |    200 |
 |    3 | 2021-02-02 08:55:00 |    150 |
 |    4 | 2021-02-02 09:15:00 |    125 |
 |    5 | 2021-02-02 09:30:00 |    250 |
 |    6 | 2021-02-02 09:45:00 |    200 |
 |    7 | 2021-02-02 10:15:00 |    180 |
 |    8 | 2021-02-02 10:30:00 |    125 |
 |    9 | 2021-02-02 10:45:00 |    200 |
 |   10 | 2021-02-02 11:15:00 |    250 |
 |   11 | 2021-02-02 11:30:00 |    150 |
 |   12 | 2021-02-02 11:45:00 |    200 |
 +------+---------------------+--------+

 mysql> select * from orders;
 +------+------------+--------+
 | id   | order_date | amount |
 +------+------------+--------+
 |    5 | 2021-01-28 |    250 |
 |    6 | 2021-01-29 |    250 |
 |    7 | 2021-01-30 |    250 |
 |    8 | 2021-01-31 |    250 |
 |    9 | 2021-02-01 |    250 |
 +------+------------+--------+

Also read : How to Get Row Number in MySQL

Here is the general syntax to do a full outer join in MySQL between tables t1 and t2 based on JOIN field id. You can update the table names and join field as per your requirement.

SELECT * FROM t1 
LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.id = t2.id 
UNION ALL 
SELECT * FROM t1 
RIGHT JOIN t2 ON t1.id = t2.id 
WHERE t1.id IS NULL

The above query will also return duplicate rows, if any. If you don’t want duplicate records in full outer join, use the following query instead.

SELECT * FROM t1 
LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.id = t2.id 
UNION 
SELECT * FROM t1 
RIGHT JOIN t2 ON t1.id = t2.id

Also read: How to get data for every hour in MySQL

Here is the SQL query to do a full outer join between tables sales and orders.

mysql> SELECT * FROM sales
       LEFT JOIN orders ON sales.id = orders.id
       UNION ALL
       SELECT * FROM sales
       RIGHT JOIN orders ON sales.id = orders.id
       WHERE sales.id IS NULL ;
 +------+---------------------+--------+------+------------+--------+
 | id   | order_date          | amount | id   | order_date | amount |
 +------+---------------------+--------+------+------------+--------+
 |    5 | 2021-02-02 09:30:00 |    250 |    5 | 2021-01-28 |    250 |
 |    6 | 2021-02-02 09:45:00 |    200 |    6 | 2021-01-29 |    250 |
 |    7 | 2021-02-02 10:15:00 |    180 |    7 | 2021-01-30 |    250 |
 |    8 | 2021-02-02 10:30:00 |    125 |    8 | 2021-01-31 |    250 |
 |    9 | 2021-02-02 10:45:00 |    200 |    9 | 2021-02-01 |    250 |
 |    1 | 2021-02-02 08:15:00 |    250 | NULL | NULL       |   NULL |
 |    2 | 2021-02-02 08:30:00 |    200 | NULL | NULL       |   NULL |
 |    3 | 2021-02-02 08:55:00 |    150 | NULL | NULL       |   NULL |
 |    4 | 2021-02-02 09:15:00 |    125 | NULL | NULL       |   NULL |
 |   10 | 2021-02-02 11:15:00 |    250 | NULL | NULL       |   NULL |
 |   11 | 2021-02-02 11:30:00 |    150 | NULL | NULL       |   NULL |
 |   12 | 2021-02-02 11:45:00 |    200 | NULL | NULL       |   NULL |
 +------+---------------------+--------+------+------------+--------+

Here is the SQL query to do full outer join without any duplicate rows in result.

mysql> SELECT * FROM sales
       LEFT JOIN orders ON sales.id = orders.id
       UNION
       SELECT * FROM sales
       RIGHT JOIN orders ON sales.id = orders.id;

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