I am wondering if there is away (possibly a better way) to order by the order of the values in an IN() clause.
The problem is that I have 2 queries, one that gets all of the IDs and the second that retrieves all the information. The first creates the order of the IDs which I want the second to order by. The IDs are put in an IN() clause in the correct order.
So it'd be something like (extremely simplified):
SELECT id FROM table1 WHERE ... ORDER BY display_order, name
SELECT name, description, ... WHERE id IN ([id's from first])
The issue is that the second query does not return the results in the same order that the IDs are put into the IN() clause.
One solution I have found is to put all of the IDs into a temp table with an auto incrementing field which is then joined into the second query.
Is there a better option?
Note: As the first query is run "by the user" and the second is run in a background process, there is no way to combine the 2 into 1 query using sub queries.
I am using MySQL, but I'm thinking it might be useful to have it noted what options there are for other DBs as well.
Use MySQL's FIELD() function:
SELECT name, description, ...
FROM ...
WHERE id IN([ids, any order])
ORDER BY FIELD(id, [ids in order])
FIELD() will return the index of the first parameter that is equal to the first parameter (other than the first parameter itself).
FIELD('a', 'a', 'b', 'c')
will return 1
FIELD('a', 'c', 'b', 'a')
will return 3
This will do exactly what you want if you paste the ids into the IN() clause and the FIELD() function in the same order.
See following how to get sorted data.
SELECT ...
FROM ...
WHERE zip IN (91709,92886,92807,...,91356)
AND user.status=1
ORDER
BY provider.package_id DESC
, FIELD(zip,91709,92886,92807,...,91356)
LIMIT 10
Two solutions that spring to mind:
order by case id when 123 then 1 when 456 then 2 else null end asc
order by instr(','||id||',',',123,456,') asc
(instr() is from Oracle; maybe you have locate() or charindex() or something like that)
If you want to do arbitrary sorting on a query using values inputted by the query in MS SQL Server 2008+, it can be done by creating a table on the fly and doing a join like so (using nomenclature from OP).
SELECT table1.name, table1.description ...
FROM (VALUES (id1,1), (id2,2), (id3,3) ...) AS orderTbl(orderKey, orderIdx)
LEFT JOIN table1 ON orderTbl.orderKey=table1.id
ORDER BY orderTbl.orderIdx
If you replace the VALUES statement with something else that does the same thing, but in ANSI SQL, then this should work on any SQL database.
Note:
The second column in the created table (orderTbl.orderIdx) is necessary when querying record sets larger than 100 or so. I originally didn't have an orderIdx column, but found that with result sets larger than 100 I had to explicitly sort by that column; in SQL Server Express 2014 anyways.
SELECT ORDER_NO, DELIVERY_ADDRESS
from IFSAPP.PURCHASE_ORDER_TAB
where ORDER_NO in ('52000077','52000079','52000167','52000297','52000204','52000409','52000126')
ORDER BY instr('52000077,52000079,52000167,52000297,52000204,52000409,52000126',ORDER_NO)
worked really great
Ans to get sorted data.
SELECT ...
FROM ...
ORDER BY FIELD(user_id,5,3,2,...,50) LIMIT 10
The IN clause describes a set of values, and sets do not have order.
Your solution with a join and then ordering on the display_order column is the most nearly correct solution; anything else is probably a DBMS-specific hack (or is doing some stuff with the OLAP functions in standard SQL). Certainly, the join is the most nearly portable solution (though generating the data with the display_order values may be problematic). Note that you may need to select the ordering columns; that used to be a requirement in standard SQL, though I believe it was relaxed as a rule a while ago (maybe as long ago as SQL-92).
Use MySQL FIND_IN_SET function:
SELECT *
FROM table_name
WHERE id IN (..,..,..,..)
ORDER BY FIND_IN_SET (coloumn_name, .., .., ..);
For Oracle, John's solution using instr() function works. Here's slightly different solution that worked -
SELECT id
FROM table1
WHERE id IN (1, 20, 45, 60)
ORDER BY instr('1, 20, 45, 60', id)
I just tried to do this is MS SQL Server where we do not have FIELD():
SELECT table1.id
...
INNER JOIN
(VALUES (10,1),(3,2),(4,3),(5,4),(7,5),(8,6),(9,7),(2,8),(6,9),(5,10)
) AS X(id,sortorder)
ON X.id = table1.id
ORDER BY X.sortorder
Note that I am allowing duplication too.
Give this a shot:
SELECT name, description, ...
WHERE id IN
(SELECT id FROM table1 WHERE...)
ORDER BY
(SELECT display_order FROM table1 WHERE...),
(SELECT name FROM table1 WHERE...)
The WHEREs will probably take a little tweaking to get the correlated subqueries working properly, but the basic principle should be sound.
My first thought was to write a single query, but you said that was not possible because one is run by the user and the other is run in the background. How are you storing the list of ids to pass from the user to the background process? Why not put them in a temporary table with a column to signify the order.
So how about this:
The user interface bit runs and inserts values into a new table you create. It would insert the id, position and some sort of job number identifier)
The job number is passed to the background process (instead of all the ids)
The background process does a select from the table in step 1 and you join in to get the other information that you require. It uses the job number in the WHERE clause and orders by the position column.
The background process, when finished, deletes from the table based on the job identifier.
I think you should manage to store your data in a way that you will simply do a join and it will be perfect, so no hacks and complicated things going on.
I have for instance a "Recently played" list of track ids, on SQLite i simply do:
SELECT * FROM recently NATURAL JOIN tracks;
Say I have a table with 1million rows. One column lists the "Group", and another lists "Sales". The Group #'s range from 1 to 100,000 such that each Group has about 10 Sales entries. I want to somehow summarize the data into 100,000 rows with the sum of Sales for each group rather than each individual sale.
My method so far has been to run a PHP loop from 1 to 100,000 where each iteration sends an SQL query to sum(Sales) WHERE Group=$i. Then I can either echo it into an html table, or insert it into a new SQL table. Problem is it takes hours this method.
Any tips on how I can improve this process? Is there a way to write this as a single SQL query that will massively increase speed? Thanks
Just try a GROUP BY:
SELECT `group`, sum(sales)
FROM your_table
GROUP BY `group`
Edit to include back ticks for group. Without them you will receive an error
You should always avoid a SQL query in a loop unless there's no other solution. In this case, you can grab all the fields at once and have them in an array and add them up in PHP that way.
I have page that display information from two different tables , and for that I have two queries.
There is no related info between these two tables.
Since both queries may contain a lot of information, I need create pagination.
BUT I don't want two separate paginations, I want only one that will contain results from query 1 and query 2 together.
How can I do that?
The only idea I have is to fetch all info of both queries into arrays, then combine the arrays into one, then create pagination that based on that array.
That of course would not help save resources.
You could use a union - the columns you're displaying must line up, so something like this should work:
select
col1 col1_alias,
col2 col2_alias,
...
from
table1
where
...
union
select
col1,
col2,
...
from
table2
where
...
order by col1_alias, col2_alias
limit 10
Basically the union will pull all the data together, and the order by and limit will apply to the whole result set.
The names of the columns don't need to match in the second select, but use column names from the first select for your order by (or create aliases, which is probably more readable depending on your dataset).
I have a voting script which pulls out the number of votes per user.
Everything is working, except I need to now display the number of votes per user in order of number of votes. Please see my database structure:
Entries:
UserID, FirstName, LastName, EmailAddress, TelephoneNumber, Image, Status
Voting:
item, vote, nvotes
The item field contains vt_img and then the UserID, so for example: vt_img4 and both vote & nvotes display the number of votes.
Any ideas how I can relate those together and display the users in order of the most voted at the top?
Thanks
You really need to change the structure of the voting table so that you can do a normal join. I would strongly suggest adding either a pure userID column, or at the very least not making it a concat of two other columns. Based on an ID you could then easily do something like this:
select
a.userID,
a.firstName,
b.votes
from
entries a
join voting b
on a.userID=b.userID
order by
b.votes desc
The other option is to consider (if it is a one to one relationship) simply merging the data into one table which would make it even easier again.
At the moment, this really is an XY problem, you are looking for a way to join two tables that aren't meant to be joined. While there are (horrible, ghastly, terrible) ways of doing it, I think the best solution is to do a little extra work and alter your database (we can certainly help with that so you don't lose any data) and then you will be able to both do what you want right now (easily) and all those other things you will want to do in the future (that you don't know about right now) will be oh so much easier.
Edit: It seems like this is a great opportunity to use a Trigger to insert the new row for you. A MySQL trigger is an action that the database will make when a certain predefined action takes place. In this case, you want to insert a new row into a table when you insert a row into your main table. The beauty is that you can use a reference to the data in the original table to do it:
CREATE TRIGGER Entries_Trigger AFTER insert ON Entries
FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
insert into Voting values(new.UserID,0,0);
END;
This will work in the following manner - When a row is inserted into your Entries table, the database will insert the row (creating the auto_increment ID and the like) then instantly call this trigger, which will then use that newly created UserID to insert into the second table (along with some zeroes for votes and nvotes).
Your database is badly designed. It should be:
Voting:
item, user_id, vote, nvotes
Placing the item id and the user id into the same column as a concatenated string with a delimiter is just asking for trouble. This isn't scalable at all. Look up the basics on Normalization.
You could try this:
SELECT *
FROM Entries e
JOIN Voting v ON (CONCAT('vt_img', e.UserID) = v.item)
ORDER BY nvotes DESC
but please notice that this query might be quite slow due to the fact that the join field for Entries table is built at query time.
You should consider changing your database structure so that Voting contains a UserID field in order to do a direct join.
I'm figuring the Entries table is where votes are cast (you're database schema doesn't make much sense to me, seems like you could work it a little better). If the votes are actually on the Votes table and that's connected to a user, then you should have UserID field in that table too. Either way the example will help.
Lets say you add UserID to the Votes table and this is where a user's votes are stored than this would be your query
SELECT Users.id, Votes.*,
SUM(Votes.nvotes) AS user_votes
FROM Users, Votes
WHERE Users.id = Votes.UserID
GROUP BY Votes.UserID
ORDER BY user_votes
USE ORDER BY in your query --
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column_name(s) ASC|DESC
I am currently working on a school system where we have a parent course and a child course (meta_courses in Moodle).
So, we have a table mdl_course_meta and it has 3 fields. Id, parent_course and child_course.
My problem is that a parent course can have many child courses so that means, for example, a parent_course = 50 can appear two times in the table which means it has 2 child courses. I just want to be able to find all the parent courses without it returning the same value twice or more times. I'm currently using this query right now which obviously doesn't do what I want:
$q = "SELECT * FROM mdl_course_meta";
I am working with PHP as well by the way.
Thanks a lot.
SELECT DISTINCT parent_course from mdl_course_meta
That should do it if you just want the course names. One thing to keep in mind, if you want other fields this is not going to work the way you want it to(how would it know which record to choose if there are multiple records with the same parent_course and you only want one).
This approach can only be used if you only want to return the parent_courses without duplicates.
DISTINCT helps to eliminate duplicates. If a query returns a result that contains duplicate rows, you can remove duplicates to produce a result set in which every row is unique. To do this, include the keyword DISTINCT after SELECT and before the output column list.
$q = "SELECT DISTINCT parent_course FROM mdl_course_meta";
If you don't want duplicate values in a single column, use GROUP BY parent_course.
In this way you are free to select any column.
If you only want distinct values for a particular column column, then you can use GROUP BY:
SELECT *
FROM mdl_course_meta
GROUP BY parent_course
The values in the other columns will be arbitrary. This will work in MySQL 5.x.
MySQL 4.x won't let you be arbitrary, so you can't mix aggregate and non-aggregate columns. Instead, you'd have to do something like this, which gets a bit complicated:
SELECT MAX(col1), MAX(col2), parent_course, MAX(col4), ...
FROM mdl_course_meta
GROUP BY parent_course
This way, the values aren't arbitrary. You've specified the ones you want.