When selecting fields in a MySQL statement you can perform certain conditional statements to get the values you require based on other values. One of these is the Switch Case conditional statement. If you’re familiar with other programming languages you probably know how to do this already but allow me to demonstrate how this can be done within a MySQL query:

SELECT
	CASE `field`
		WHEN 'value1' THEN 'output_value1'
		WHEN 'value2' THEN 'output_value2'
		WHEN 'value3' THEN 'output_value3'
	END AS fieldAlias
FROM
	`table`

Heres an another example using the Switch Case conditional statement that will output a users active state based on a number in the database:

SELECT
	CASE `userActive`
		WHEN '1' THEN 'Active'
		WHEN '2' THEN 'Pending'
		WHEN '3' THEN 'Deleted'
	END AS userActive
FROM
	`user`