Working with SPACE in MySQL

Intro

MySQL provides the SPACE function to generate a series of spaces. In this article, we will learn how to use SPACE in MySQL.

The Syntax

The basic syntax of a SPACE is as follows:

SELECT SPACE(n);

• n is the number of spaces to create.

Getting Setup

We will be using docker in this article, but feel free to install your database locally instead. Once you have docker installed, create a new file called docker-compose.yml and add the following.

version: '3'
 
services:
  db:
    image: mysql:latest
    container_name: db
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root_pass
      MYSQL_DATABASE: app_db
      MYSQL_USER: db_user
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: db_user_pass
    ports:
      - "6033:3306"
    volumes:
      - dbdata:/var/lib/mysql
  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    container_name: pma
    links:
      - db
    environment:
      PMA_HOST: db
      PMA_PORT: 3306
      PMA_ARBITRARY: 1
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8081:80

volumes:
  dbdata:

Next, run docker-compose up.

Now, navigate to http://localhost:8081/ to access phpMyAdmin. Then log in with the username root and pass root_pass.

Click the SQL tab and you are ready to go.

A Simple Example

Space is a simply function to generates a number of spaces requests. Here is the example.

select space(10) as res;

We can also use the space to add spaces between strings and names.

select concat("Jane", space(5), "Doe") as res;