How to do date check?

Question

MySQL

Good day, I have a question:
there is a table:

id  |  name  |  start_date  |  end_date
1   |  act1    |  2018-02-15 00:00:00  |  2018-04-05 00:00:00
1   |  act2    |  NULL  |  2018-04-23 00:00:00
1   |  act3    |  2018-02-12 00:00:00  |  2018-02-28 00:00:00
1   |  act4    |  2018-03-11 00:00:00  |  2018-04-05 00:00:00
1   |  act5    |  2018-02-15 00:00:00  |  2018-02-20 00:00:00

this is a table of events,
how can I correctly draw conclusions from it if start_date is empty or has already come, while end_date has not come, then this is Active Action , if start_date has not come, then this is Upcoming Action , if end_date has already passed, then this is Ended Action
no solution found!
Thanks in advance for your reply!

Answer 1

SELECT 'Active Action' as `type`, * FROM `table` WHERE `start_date` IS NULL OR (NOW() BETWEEN `start_date` AND `end_date`)
UNION
SELECT 'Upcoming Action' as `type`, * FROM `table` WHERE `start_date` > NOW();

Something like this ...
upd: I did not check it myself, maybe there is an error somewhere, but I conveyed the essence.

Answer 2

Try using if or case like this:

SELECT CASE <variable> WHEN <value>      THEN <returnvalue>
                       WHEN <othervalue> THEN <returnthis>
                                         ELSE <returndefaultcase>
       END AS <newcolumnname>
FROM <table>