Conditional String Concatenation In PostgreSQL

Answer :

The function concat_ws() does exactly what you want. The first parameter is used as glue between the rest. Nulls are ignored:

select concat_ws('//', owner_addr1, owner_addr2, owner_addr3)

Test:

red=# select concat_ws('//', 'abc', null, null, 'xx', null, 'xyz', null) 
          as address;
   address    
--------------
 abc//xx//xyz
(1 row)

Probably most obvious to use a CASE statement. There are 4 cases:

owner_addr2 IS NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NULL => ''       
owner_addr2 IS NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NOT NULL => '//' || owner_addr3
owner_addr2 IS NOT NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NULL => '//' || owner_addr2
owner_addr2 IS NOT NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NOT NULL '//' || owner_addr2 || '//' owner_addr3

SELECT owner_addr1 
    || CASE WHEN owner_addr2 IS NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NULL
            THEN ''
            WHEN owner_addr2 IS NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NOT NULL
            THEN '//' || owner_addr3
            WHEN owner_addr2 IS NOT NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NULL 
            THEN '//' || owner_addr2   
            WHEN owner_addr2 IS NOT NULL AND owner_addr3 IS NOT NULL 
            THEN '//' || owner_addr2 || '//' || owner_addr3
       END AS owner_addr
FROM ...

An alternative is to use 2 CASE statements:

SELECT owner_addr1 
    || CASE WHEN owner_addr2 IS NULL 
            THEN '' 
            ELSE '//' || owner_addr2
       END
    || CASE WHEN owner_addr3 IS NULL 
            THEN '' 
            ELSE '//' || owner_addr3
       END as owner_addr
FROM ...

COALESCE can be used instead of CASE:

SELECT owner_addr1 
    || COALESCE('//' || owner_addr2, '')
    || COALESCE('//' || owner_addr3, '') as owner_addr
FROM ...