MySQL efficient SELECT query - php

I'm not a database professional, but currently working on one query (PHP->MySQL):
I have 3 tables:
'Items': id, name, link
'ItemsToUsers': id, item_id, user_id
'Users': id, email
Each 'Item' availability is submitted to regular changes which I check on fly by some algorithm.
My goal is to
1) SELECT all Items and check on fly if they are available
2) If Item is available, notify users who are monitoring it by email. For that I need to SELECT users from 'ItemsToUsers' and then get their emails from Users table.
I know how to do it in a straightforward way, but I feel that I will fall into running to many queries. (individual SELECT for every user...)
Is there a way to do it more efficiently: in one query or by changing the algorithm?
Thank you for your time!

There's not enough information to determine how an item is available. This severely impedes the ability to query item 2.
That said, let's suppose we add a "available" column to the Items table that is a tinyint of 0 for not available, 1 for available.
A query, then, which would get all email addresses for persons watching items that are available is:
SELECT u.email FROM Users AS u JOIN ItemsToUsers AS k ON k.user_id = u.id JOIN Items AS i on i.id = k.item_id WHERE i.available = 1;
Alternatively, you could use a subquery and IN.
Let's suppose you have a different table called Availability with the columns id, item_id and available, which again is a tinyint containing a 1 for available and 0 for not available.
SELECT u.email FROM Users AS u JOIN ItemsToUsers AS k ON k.user_id = u.id WHERE k.item_id IN (SELECT a.item_id FROM Availability AS a WHERE a.available = 1);
Again, without an idea of how you are getting a list of available products, it is impossible to optimize your queries for retrieving a list of email addresses.

Your steps allude to doing this in n+1 queries (where n = number of entries in the Items table):
SELECT * FROM Items; -- This is the +1 part
While iterating over that result set, you intend to determine if it's available and, if it is, to notify users who are watching it. Assuming you have a given item id and you want to select all users' email if that product id is active, then you could do this:
SELECT email FROM Users u
INNER JOIN ItemsToUsers iu ON iu.user_id = u.id
INNER JOIN Items i ON iu.item_id = i.id
WHERE i.id = {your item id}
You would be running this query for every item in your table. This is the n part.
In general you could instead generate a list of emails for all users who are watching all products that are active, after you have already determined which ones should be active:
SELECT DISTINCT email FROM Users u
INNER JOIN ItemsToUsers iu ON iu.user_id = u.id
INNER JOIN Items i ON iu.item_id = i.id
WHERE i.is_active = 1
This will get the job done in a total of 2 queries, regardless of how many users or items you have. As a bonus, this one can give you distinct emails, whereas the first solution would still need application-level code to remove duplicates returned by the multiple queries.

SELECT Items.id, Items.name, Items.link FROM Items
INNER JOIN ItemsToUsers ON ItemsToUsers.item_id = Items.items.id
INNER JOIN Users ON ItemsToUsers.user_id = Users.id ;

Related

JOIN - Select columns/details with different criteria than COUNT

I have a chat system. There are 3 tables:
data_chats - holds the IDs of the chats themselves. This is where you mark a chat as deleted.
data_chat_parties - holds the member or team ID that is included in chat along with chat permissions, who they were invited by, etc
data_chat_messages - holds the actual messages of chats
With my query, I am trying to fetch the info from data_chat_parties related to the party requesting this information (ie currently logged in user), but also get the total number of chat parties in the chat.
SELECT
data_chats.id AS chat,
data_chats_parties.*,
COUNT(data_chats_parties.id) AS total_parties,
data_chats_messages.created AS last_message_created,
data_chats_messages.author AS last_message_author,
data_chats_messages.author_type AS last_message_author_type,
data_chats_messages.message AS last_message
FROM data_chats
LEFT JOIN data_chats_parties ON data_chats_parties.chat=data_chats.id
LEFT JOIN data_chats_messages ON data_chats_messages.chat=data_chats.id AND data_chats_messages.active=1
WHERE
data_chats.active=1 AND
data_chats_parties.member=1 AND
data_chats_parties.status >= 1
GROUP BY data_chats_parties.chat
ORDER BY last_message_created DESC
This all works fine, except that total_chat_parties always returns 1, presumably because it's only matching the record of data_chats_parties.member=1. How would I fetch the party record specific to this user but at the same time, fetch the total number of parties for this chat?
You should use a correlated query :
SELECT data_chats.id AS chat,
(SELECT COUNT(data_chats_parties.id) FROM data_chats_parties
WHERE data_chats_parties.chat = data_chats.id) AS total_parties,
data_chats_messages.created AS last_message_created,
data_chats_messages.author AS last_message_author,
data_chats_messages.author_type AS last_message_author_type,
data_chats_messages.message AS last_message
FROM data_chats
LEFT JOIN data_chats_messages
ON data_chats_messages.chat = data_chats.id
AND data_chats_messages.active = 1
AND data_chats_parties.member = 1
AND data_chats_parties.status >= 1
WHERE data_chats.active = 1
ORDER BY last_message_created DESC
Another thing is the conditions on the WHERE clause, you can filter the RIGHT table of a LEFT JOIN in the WHERE clause, those condition should only be specified in the ON clause.
You also group by a column from the RIGHT table - this is not suggested at all! Either use an inner join, or group by another field.
you may be able to use a subquery in the select statement to give you the desired count.
(select COUNT(data_chats_parties.id) from data_chats_parties where data_chats_parties.chat=data_chats.id) AS total_parties,
Also you can then remove the line
LEFT JOIN data_chats_parties ON data_chats_parties.chat=data_chats.id
Hopefully I've typed that all correctly =)

Using multiple inner joins

I have four tables:
users, orders, orders_product and products.
They are connected to each other by foreign key
user tables contains: id, name, email and username.
product table contains: id, product_name, product_description and product_price
orders table contains: id, u_id(foreign key).
orders_product table contains: id, product_id(foreign key), order_id(foreign key).
Now I was trying to fetch the name of a user with the total price of a particular order that he has placed.
The maximum I could went for was something like this:
SELECT prod.order_id,
SUM(product_price) AS Total
FROM products
INNER JOIN
(SELECT orders.id AS order_id,
orders_product.product_id
FROM orders
INNER JOIN orders_product ON orders.id = orders_product.order_id
WHERE order_id=1) AS prod ON products.id = prod.product_id;
It showed me total price of a particular order. Now I have two questions:
Is that query correct. It looks like a very long query. Can the same result be achieved with a smaller one?
How to fetch the name of a user with the total price of a particular order that he has placed.
Hi some addition to #Gordon Linoff
your query seems ok.
if you store your price data in order_products it will be good and some benefit, one of these benefit is aggregation will be simple. Second benefit if product price change it will not affect to order.
Your query is correct for one order, but it can be improved:
Don't use a subquery unless necessary. In MySQL this introduces additional overhead.
You are only looking at one order, which seems on the light site. You should remove the where clause.
You should be using a group by because you want aggregation.
You need to join in the user table to get the name.
I also added table aliases (abbreviations for table names). This makes the query a bit more readable:
SELECT u.name, SUM(p.product_price) as Total
FROM orders_product op INNER JOIN
orders o
ON o.id = op.order_id INNER JOIN
products p
ON p.id = op.product_id INNER JOIN
users u
on o.userid = u.id
WHERE op.order_id = 1
GROUP BY u.name;
Your SQL is wrong. Because You want to calculate specific to user. But your SQL is specific to Order. Your SQL will give result for One Order. Please make it User Specific by giving user name or what ever is unique.

trying to optimize mysql query but when i add ORDER BY its takes long time

this is my query
SELECT U.id AS user_id,C.name AS country,
CASE
WHEN U.facebook_id > 0 THEN CONCAT(F.first_name,' ',F.last_name)
WHEN U.twitter_id > 0 THEN T.name
WHEN U.regular_id > 0 THEN CONCAT(R.first,' ',R.last)
END AS name,
FROM user U LEFT OUTER JOIN regular R
ON U.regular_id = R.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN twitter T
ON U.twitter_id = T.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN facebook F
ON U.facebook_id = F.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN country C
ON U.country_id = C.id
WHERE (CONCAT(F.first_name,' ',F.last_name) LIKE '%' OR T.name LIKE '%' OR CONCAT(R.first,' ',R.last) LIKE '%') AND U.active = 1
LIMIT 100
its realy fast, but in the EXPLAIN it don't show me it uses INDEXES (there is indexes).
but when i add ORDER BY 'name' before the LIMIT its takes long time why? there is a way to solve it?
tables: users 150000, regular 50000, facebook 50000, twitter 50000, country 250 and growing!
It takes a long time because it's a composite column, not a table column. The name column is a result of a case selection, and unlike simple selects with multiple join, MySQL has to use a different sorting algorithm for this kind of data.
I'm talking from ignorance here, but you could store the data in a temporary table and then sort it. It may go faster since you can create indexes for it but it won't be as fast, because of the different storage type.
UPDATE 2011-01-26
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE `short_select`
SELECT U.id AS user_id,C.name AS country,
CASE
WHEN U.facebook_id > 0 THEN CONCAT(F.first_name,' ',F.last_name)
WHEN U.twitter_id > 0 THEN T.name
WHEN U.regular_id > 0 THEN CONCAT(R.first,' ',R.last)
END AS name,
FROM user U LEFT OUTER JOIN regular R
ON U.regular_id = R.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN twitter T
ON U.twitter_id = T.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN facebook F
ON U.facebook_id = F.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN country C
ON U.country_id = C.id
WHERE (CONCAT(F.first_name,' ',F.last_name) LIKE '%' OR T.name LIKE '%' OR CONCAT(R.first,' ',R.last) LIKE '%') AND U.active = 1
LIMIT 100;
ALTER TABLE `short_select` ADD INDEX(`name`); --add successive columns if you are going to order by them as well.
SELECT * FROM `short_select`
ORDER BY 'name'; -- same as above
Remember temporary tables are dropped upon connection termination, so you don't have to clean them, but you should anyway.
Without actually knowing your DB structure, and assuming you have all of the proper indexes on everything. An Order By statement takes some variable amount of time to sort the elements being returned by a query (index or not). If it is only 10 rows, it will seem almost instant, if you get 2000 rows, it will be a little slower, if you are sorting 15k rows joined across multiple tables, it is going to take some time to sort the returned result. Also make sure your adding indexes to the fields your sorting by. You may want to take the desired result and store everything in a presorted stub table for faster querying later as well (if you query this sorted result set often)
You need to create first 100 records from each name table separately, then union the results, join them with user and country, order and limit the output:
SELECT u.id AS user_id, c.name AS country, n.name
FROM (
SELECT facebook_id AS id, CONCAT(F.first_name, ' ', F.last_name) AS name
FROM facebook
ORDER BY
first_name, last_name
LIMIT 100
UNION ALL
SELECT twitter_id, name
FROM twitter
WHERE twitter_id NOT IN
(
SELECT facebook_id
FROM facebook
)
ORDER BY
name
LIMIT 100
UNION ALL
SELECT regular_id, CONCAT(R.first, ' ', R.last)
FROM regular
WHERE regular_id NOT IN
(
SELECT facebook_id
FROM facebook
)
AND
regular_id NOT IN
(
SELECT twitter_id
FROM twitter
)
ORDER BY
first, last
LIMIT 100
) n
JOIN user u
ON u.id = n.id
JOIN country с
ON c.id = u.country_id
Create the following indexes:
facebook (first_name, last_name)
twitter (name)
regular (first, last)
Note that this query orders slightly differently from your original one: in this query, 'Ronnie James Dio' would be sorted after 'Ronnie Scott'.
The use of functions on the columns prevent indexes from being used.
CONCAT(F.first_name,' ',F.last_name)
The result of the function is not indexed, even though the individual columns may be. Either you have to rewrite the conditions to query the name columns individually, or you have to store and index the result of that function (such as a "full name" column).
The index on [user.active] is unlikely to help you if most of the users are active.
I don't know what your application is all about, but I wonder if it hadn't been easier if you ditched the foreign keys in User table and instead put the UserID as a foreign key in the other tables instead.

How can I join 3 tables with mysql & php?

I have a page that pulls the users Post,username,xbc/xlk tags etc which is perfect... BUT since I am pulling information from a MyBB bulletin board system, its quite different. When replying, people are are allowed to change the "Thread Subject" by simplying replying and changing it.
I dont want it to SHOW the changed subject title, just the original title of all posts in that thread.
By default it repies with "RE:thread title". They can easily edit this and it will show up in the "Subject" cell & people wont know which thread it was posted in because they changed their thread to when replying to the post.
So I just want to keep the orginial thread title when they are replying.
Make sense~??
Tables:mybb_users
Fields:uid,username
Tables:mybb_userfields
Fields:ufid
Tables:mybb_posts
Fields:pid,tid,replyto,subject,ufid,username,uid,message
Tables:mybb_threads
Fields:tid,fid,subject,uid,username,lastpost,lastposter,lastposteruid
I haev tried multiple queries with no success:
$result = mysql_query("
SELECT * FROM mybb_users
LEFT JOIN (mybb_posts, mybb_userfields, mybb_threads)
ON (
mybb_userfields.ufid=mybb_posts.uid
AND mybb_threads.tid=mybb_posts.tid
AND mybb_users.uid=mybb_userfields.ufid
)
WHERE mybb_posts.fid=42");
$result = mysql_query("
SELECT * FROM mybb_users
LEFT JOIN (mybb_posts, mybb_userfields, mybb_threads)
ON (
mybb_userfields.ufid=mybb_posts.uid
AND mybb_threads.tid=mybb_posts.tid
AND mybb_users.uid=mybb_posts.uid
)
WHERE mybb_threads.fid=42");
$result = mysql_query("
SELECT * FROM mybb_posts
LEFT JOIN (mybb_userfields, mybb_threads)
ON (
mybb_userfields.ufid=mybb_posts.uid
AND mybb_threads.tid=mybb_posts.tid
)
WHERE mybb_posts.fid=42");
Your syntax isn't appropriate for carrying out multiple LEFT JOINs. Each join needs its own ON clause.
SELECT
*
FROM
mybb_users
LEFT JOIN mybb_userfields ON mybb_users.uid = mybb_userfields.ufid
LEFT JOIN mybb_posts ON mybb_userfields.ufid = mybb_posts.uid
LEFT JOIN mybb_threads ON mybb_posts.tid = mybb_threads.tid
WHERE
mybb_posts.fid = 42
This query should give the results you want. But it may not be the most efficient query for getting those results. Check the output of EXPLAIN as part of testing, to make sure it is not using table scans or anything like that.
Do all of these joins need to be LEFT JOINs? LEFT JOIN forces MySQL to join the tables in the indicated order, rather than allowing the query optimiser to determine the best order in which to join them. That's why you might need to be careful about the query execution plan. The main difference between JOIN and LEFT JOIN as far as query output is concerned is that LEFT JOIN resultsets will contain at least one row for each row of the table on the left-hand side of the join, whereas a regular JOIN will not contain a row if there aren't matches on the right-hand side of the join.
Edit: Also, you say that "I don't want it to SHOW the changed subject title, just the original title of all posts in that thread." This suggests that you only want a subset of the columns from these tables, in which case SELECT * is inappropriate.

Mysql - Join matches and non-matches

This is related to my other question:
Managing Foreign Keys
I am trying to join the table of matches and non-matches.
So I have a list of interests, a list of users, and a list of user interests.
I want the query to return all interests, whether the user has the interest or not (should be null in that case), only where the user = x. Every time I get the query working its only matching interests that the user specifically has, instead of all interests whether they have it or not.
You should rather use LEFT JOINS
Something like
SELECT *
FROM interests i LEFT JOIN
userinterests ui ON i.interestID = ui.interestID LEFT JOIN
users u ON ui.userID = u.uiserID
WHERE userID = ?
where is the user id you are looking for.
SELECT *
FROM interests i
LEFT JOIN userinterests ui ON i.interestID = ui.interestID
LEFT JOIN users u ON ui.userID = u.uiserID
and u.userID = ?
If you put a where condition on a table that should have no records inteh main tbale, you convert the join from a left join to an inner join. The only time you should ever have a condition inthe where clasue for something one the right side of a left join is when you are searching for records that don't match (where u.userid is null, for instance)
Of course you should define the fields to be selected and never use select * in production code especially not when you have a join as it sends repeated information across the network (the data inteh join feilds is repeated) and is a waste of resources and poor prgramming practice for multiple reasons.

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