SQL - LEFT JOINS

The SQL LEFT JOIN returns all rows from the left table, even if there are no matches in the right table. This means that if the ON clause matches 0 (zero) records in right table, the join will still return a row in the result,but with NULL in each column from right table.
This means that a left join returns all the values from the left table, plus matched values from the right table or NULL in case of no matching join predicate.

Syntax:

The basic syntax of LEFT JOIN is as follows:

SELECT table1.column1, table2.column2...
FROM table1
LEFT JOIN table2
ON table1.common_filed = table2.common_field;

Here given condition could be any given expression based on your requirement.

Example:

Consider following two tables, (a) CUSTOMERS table is as follows:

+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME     | AGE | ADDRESS   | SALARY   |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
|  1 | Ramesh   |  32 | Ahmedabad |  2000.00 |
|  2 | Khilan   |  25 | Delhi     |  1500.00 |
|  3 | kaushik  |  23 | Kota      |  2000.00 |
|  4 | Chaitali |  25 | Mumbai    |  6500.00 |
|  5 | Hardik   |  27 | Bhopal    |  8500.00 |
|  6 | Komal    |  22 | MP        |  4500.00 |
|  7 | Muffy    |  24 | Indore    | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+

(b) Another table is ORDERS as follows:

+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
| OID | DATE                | CUSTOMER_ID | AMOUNT |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+
| 102 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |           3 |   3000 |
| 100 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |           3 |   1500 |
| 101 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 |           2 |   1560 |
| 103 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 |           4 |   2060 |
+-----+---------------------+-------------+--------+

Now let us join these two tables using LEFT JOIN as follows:

SQL> SELECT  ID, NAME, AMOUNT, DATE
     FROM CUSTOMERS
     LEFT JOIN ORDERS
     ON CUSTOMERS.ID = ORDERS.CUSTOMER_ID;

This would produce following result:

+----+----------+--------+---------------------+
| ID | NAME     | AMOUNT | DATE                |
+----+----------+--------+---------------------+
|  1 | Ramesh   |   NULL | NULL                |
|  2 | Khilan   |   1560 | 2009-11-20 00:00:00 |
|  3 | kaushik  |   3000 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
|  3 | kaushik  |   1500 | 2009-10-08 00:00:00 |
|  4 | Chaitali |   2060 | 2008-05-20 00:00:00 |
|  5 | Hardik   |   NULL | NULL                |
|  6 | Komal    |   NULL | NULL                |
|  7 | Muffy    |   NULL | NULL                |
+----+----------+--------+---------------------+