postgresqlaggregate-functionsnullif

PostgreSQL: How to avoid divide by zero?


I am trying to get the average occupation rate from table occu_cap but I am getting the error "ERROR: division by zero". There are 0 values in both columns. I've been looking at using NULLIF(column_name,0) but I can't figure out how to implement this into the code below.

SELECT *, AVG((occupancy/capacity) * 100)) AS avg_occupancy_rate
FROM occu_cap
GROUP BY 1,2,3

Sample data and expected result:

occupancy capacity avg_occupancy_rate
1232 1630 75.58
0 658 null
0 0 null

Solution

  • The error was caused that capacity was 0 value (which might not allow from math divide), if your expected result is 0 when capacity is 0 from occupancy/capacity

    AVG((COALESCE(occupancy / NULLIF(capacity,0), 0) * 100))
    

    Edit

    You can try to use CASE WHEN expression to judge the value whether zero then return NULL

    AVG(CASE WHEN capacity <> 0 AND occupancy <> 0 THEN ((occupancy::decimal/capacity * 1.0) * 100) END)
    

    If you want to show all of columns you can try to use the window function.

    SELECT *,AVG(CASE WHEN capacity <> 0 AND occupancy <> 0 THEN ((occupancy::decimal/capacity * 1.0) * 100) END) OVER(PARTITION BY id)
    FROM occu_cap
    

    NOTE

    If your occupancy or capacity is not a type of a float-point number we need to CAST that as a float-point number before doing AVG

    sqlfiddle