Postgresql WHERE clause using conditional sub-queries - postgresql

Question

I have a situation where each of the clients has users and each user can access to information about one or more branches.
We also have sys admins who can see everything and in database don't have any sites assigned to them. It just says the user is sys admin, so our system does not restrict the access.
I need to make a database query where I extract the list of branches the user has access to, but if the user is sys admin, I want to extract the list of all branches in the system.
I was trying something like this, but it does not work:
Select sites.name, sites.id
FROM sites
WHERE
sites.id IN (
CASE
WHEN (select u.level FROM users "u" WHERE u.username = 'JohnBrown') ='ROLE_SYSTEM_ADMIN'
THEN
(select id FROM sites)
ELSE
(select s2.id FROM users_have_sites uhs2
left join users u2 ON u2.id = uhs2.user_id
left join sites s2 ON s2.id = uhs2.site_id
where u2.username = 'JonhBrown')
END
)
I am getting this error:
ERROR: more than one row returned by a subquery used as an expression

Answer 1

I think something like this would work for you:
SELECT s.name, s.id
FROM sites s
LEFT JOIN users_have_sites uhs ON uhs.site_id = s.id
LEFT JOIN users u ON u.id = uhs.user_id AND u.username = 'JohnBrown'
WHERE (CASE WHEN (SELECT u.level FROM users WHERE u.username = 'JohnBrown') = 'ROLE_SYSTEM_ADMIN'
THEN TRUE ELSE FALSE END
OR u.id IS NOT NULL);
The LEFT JOINs do not filter out records from the sites table like an INNER JOIN would, so any site that meets either of the conditions in the WHERE clause will be in the result. This means that if your subquery shows that the user is a sys admind or if there is a record for that user and site is found in the users_have_sites table, those sites will be in the result set.
EDIT: Another fairly easy to read solution would be something like this:
SELECT s.name, s.id
FROM sites s,
users_have_sites uhs,
users u
WHERE u.username = 'JohnBrown'
AND (u.level = 'ROLE_SYSTEM_ADMIN'
OR (s.id = uhs.site_id AND u.id = uhs.user_id))
GROUP BY s.name, s.id;
The downside of this query is that it uses implicit joins which are not used very much any more. They are generally seen as an older way of doing things and can be less efficient. This will join all rows of on table to all rows of another table and then all of your filtering (and what you would generally think of as join conditions) are all in the WHERE clause. These typed of joins can be less efficient but this one should not be as the WHERE clause makes sure that only 1 result per site.

Answer 2

I think that this does what you want:
select s.name, s.id
from sites s
inner join users u on u.username = 'JohnBrown'
where
u.level = 'ROLE_SYSTEM_ADMIN'
or exists (
select 1
from users_have_sites uhs
where uhs.site_id = s.id and uhs.user_id = u.id
)
Here is another version of the query that you may find easier to follow (I do):
select s.name, s.id
from users u
inner join sites s
on u.level = 'ROLE_SYSTEM_ADMIN'
or exists (
select 1
from users_have_sites uhs
where uhs.site_id = s.id and uhs.user_id = u.id
)
where u.username = 'JohnBrown'