Query returning "NULL" in phpmyadmin?

[homer09001]

im stumped here when i run my code in the browser i get no errors, it just kills the script.

yet when i run the query in phpmyadmin it returns "NULL"

the query i run in phpmyadmin:

SELECT SUM(FlightTime)as sumhours FROM pireps WHERE PilotID='VAI0213'

any ideas?

it should return 0 as there are no rows in the database with a PilotID of VAI0213

[virtualdevl]

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/group-by-functions.html

SUM([DISTINCT] expr)

Returns the sum of expr. If the return set has no rows, SUM() returns NULL. The DISTINCT keyword can be used in MySQL 5.0 to sum only the distinct values of expr.

SUM() returns NULL if there were no matching rows. Hope that helps.

[homer09001]

im confused i have changed the query but its still returning NULL so how can i get PHP to detect that and change the result to '0'

[Lars_Berg]

You can handle that case directly in the select statement

 SELECT coalesce(SUM(FlightTime),0) as sumhours 
    FROM pireps 
 WHERE PilotID='VAI0213'

[homer09001]

i finally realised after using your query idea, it wasn't actually the query causing the problem is was the way i was passing the query to an array.