Codeigniter activerecord selecting null into a dummy column

Question

I´d like to add an extra column to the select for formatting purposes. The problem is that when I do

$this->db->select("NULL as ExtraColumn1")

codeigniter treats NULL as a column, so when it generates the query it's something like

SELECT `NULL` AS ExtraColumn1 ...

which of course returns a DB error. The same happens when I try

$this->db->select(" '' as ExtraColumn1")

Is there any way of doing it using activerecord?

Thanks

Answer 1

Tell CodeIgniter not to wrap fields in ticks. You do this by passing false as the second parameter in select():

 $this->db->select("NULL as ExtraColumn1", false);

From the manual:

$this->db->select() accepts an optional second parameter. If you set it to FALSE, CodeIgniter will not try to protect your field or table names with backticks. This is useful if you need a compound select statement.