Getting results from two different tables using a join - sql

Question

Let's say I have the following tables:
+-------------------------------------------+
| t_classroom |
+-------------------------------------------+
| PK | id |
| | admin_user_id |
| | name |
| | students |
+-------------------------------------------+
+-------------------------------------------+
| t_shared |
+-------------------------------------------+
| | admin_user_id |
| | classroom_id |
| | expiry |
+-------------------------------------------+
I want to write a query that will pull all classrooms that an admin_user_id has access to. In essence, I want a union of classroom rows when I search by admin_user_id in the t_classroom table as well as classroom rows when I search by admin_user_id in the t_shared table. I made the following attempt:
SELECT
id,
admin_user_id,
name,
students
FROM
t_classroom
WHERE
admin_user_id = 1
UNION ALL
SELECT
c.id,
c.admin_user_id,
c.name,
students
FROM
t_classroom c
INNER JOIN t_shared s
ON c.id = s.classroom_id
WHERE
admin_user_id = 1
Does the above look correct? Is there anything more efficient/cleaner?

Answer 1

Depending on how much data you have you could probably get away with just using an IN clause to look at the other table.
SELECT
c.id,
c.admin_user_id,
c.name,
c.students
FROM
t_classroom c
WHERE
c.admin_user_id = 1
OR c.id IN ( select s.classroom_id from t_shared s where s.admin_user_id = 1 )
Your union wont work because you're left-joining to the t_shared table and checking only the classroom admin user.
If you join the shared room you would also end up with duplicates and would need to distinct the result too.
Edit:
Because of the large number of rows it might be better to use an exists check on the 2nd table.
SELECT
c.id,
c.admin_user_id,
c.name,
c.students
FROM
t_classroom c
WHERE
c.admin_user_id = 1
OR EXISTS ( select 1 from t_shared s where s.classroom_id = c.id AND s.admin_user_id = 1 )

Answer 2

Your solution is fundamentally fine, the only two problems I can detect when eyeballing your query are:
You need to write s.admin_user_id instead of admin_user_id in the last line to avoid an error message, because there is a column of that name in both tables. Best practice is to always qualify column names with the table names.
You might want to use UNION instead of UNION ALL if you want to avoid a duplicate result row in the case that both tables have admin_user_id = 1 for the same classroom.