SERIAL()

Function Description

The SERIAL() function is used to serialize a concatenation string, combining single or multiple columns/values into a binary format with a return type of VARCHAR. It is similar to CONCAT(), but type information for values cannot be captured in CONCAT(). Typically used with the SERIAL_EXTRACT() function.

Returns NULL if any of the parameters in SERIAL() is NULL. To handle NULL values, use SERIAL_FULL().

Function syntax

> SERIAL(para)

Parameter interpretation

Parameters	Description
para	Column/Value to Serialize

Examples

create table t1(a varchar(3), b int);
insert into t1 values("ABC",1);
insert into t1 values("DEF",NULL);

mysql> select serial(a,b) from t1;--The query returns the serialized result of the combination of columns a and b. The output is NULL when there is a NULL value.
+--------------+
| serial(a, b) |
+--------------+
| FABC :    |
| NULL         |
+--------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select serial(a,'hello') from t1;--The query returns the result of serializing the combination of column a and the value hello.
+------------------+
| serial(a, hello) |
+------------------+
| FABC Fhello    |
| FDEF Fhello    |
+------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)