The following code successfully gives me details of logged in peoples' requested books, and the books themselves, from a specific library.
SELECT bookRequest.version, bookRequest.status, users.user_id, users.firstname, users.lastname, books.Author, books.Title
FROM users
INNER JOIN bookRequest
ON users.user_id=bookRequest.user_id
INNER JOIN books
ON bookRequest.bookID = books.ID
INNER JOIN libraryTokens
ON bookRequest.libraryID = libraryTokens.libraryID
WHERE libraryTokens.libraryID='". $libraryID ."'
The bookRequest table also has columns for directly storing manually added requests for books not in the system, requested by people not logged in. In this case, bookRequest.user_id is always -1, and the extra columns bookRequest.firstname, bookRequest.lastname, bookRequest.Author, and bookRequest.Title hold the guest's name and their non-listed book request's details.
I'm trying to figure out a way (I have no idea if it's even possible) of, when retrieving a library's book requests, ignoring the
INNER JOIN bookRequest
ON users.user_id=bookRequest.user_id
INNER JOIN books
ON bookRequest.bookID = books.ID
part of the query if bookRequest.user_id is -1, and instead retrieving bookRequest.firstname, bookRequest.lastname, bookRequest.Author, and bookRequest.Title, but not ignoring the joins if bookRequest.user_id>-1?
Is it possible, or wayyyyy too messy, and instead I should do two separate queries, and combine the resulting arrays using php?
Thanks for taking a look.
You'll need to change your JOIN to an OUTER JOIN and add a CASE statement to your query. Something like this:
SELECT bookRequest.version,
bookRequest.status,
CASE WHEN bookRequest.user_id = -1 THEN bookRequest.user_id ELSE users.user_id END userid,
CASE WHEN bookRequest.user_id = -1 THEN bookRequest.firstname ELSE users.firstname END firstname,
...
FROM bookRequest
JOIN libraryTokens
ON bookRequest.libraryID = libraryTokens.libraryID
LEFT JOIN books
ON bookRequest.bookID = books.ID
LEFT JOIN users
ON users.user_id=bookRequest.user_id
WHERE libraryTokens.libraryID='". $libraryID ."'
Related
my query looks like that:
SELECT
count(users.id)
FROM users
LEFT JOIN mail_sender_jobs_actions ON mail_sender_jobs_actions.userID = users.id
LEFT JOIN table2 ON table2.userID = users.id
LEFT JOIN table3 ON table3.userID = users.id
WHERE {$flexibleWhereClause}
Now, the mail_sender_jobs_actions table CAN (doesnt need to return anything) return multiple entries. I dont want to group the results but still limit the returns of mail_sender_jobs_actions to 1 so I dont get duplicates... Otherwise the count wouldnt work properly.
Scraped the whole web and found nothing working for me as I want to keep the where clause flexible. Any solution?
EDIT
so to explain the situation. We have a table with users (users). We have a table with actions (mail_seder_jobs_actions). We have other tables related to that query which are not relevant (table1, table2, table3)
If a user does an action, an entry is being created in the actions table.
The where clause is flexible, meaning it is possible that somebody wants to only show users with a specific action.
It is also possible that an action is not relevant to the user, so this entry gets ignored.
With where criteria you have there is no point using left join, since the where criteria applies to the table on the right hand side, effectively turning the left join into an inner join.
Apparently yo do not use any columns from the right hand side table, so instead of using joins, I would use an exists subquery.
SELECT
1 as count,
users.email
FROM users
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1
FROM mail_sender_jobs_actions
WHERE mail_sender_jobs_actions.userID = users.id
AND mail_sender_jobs_actions.type = '1'
AND mail_sender_jobs_actions.jobID = '106'
AND {$flexibleWhereClause})
However, there is little point in having the count() because it will always return 1. If you want to count how many records each user has in the mail_sender_jobs_actions table, then you have to use left join, group by, and move the where criteria into the join condition:
SELECT
count(mail_sender_jobs_actions.userID),
users.email
FROM users
LEFT JOIN mail_sender_jobs_actions ON mail_sender_jobs_actions.userID = users.id
AND mail_sender_jobs_actions.type = '1'
AND mail_sender_jobs_actions.jobID = '106'
AND {$flexibleWhereClause}
GROUP BY users.email
I know this question has been asked multiple times (however, I could still not find a solution):
PHP MYSQL showing posts with comments
mysql query - blog posts and comments with limit
mysql structure for posts and comments
...
Basic question: having tables posts, comments, user... can you with one single select statement select and show all posts and all comments (with comment.user, comment.text, comment.timestamp)? How would such a select statement look like? If not, what is the easiest solution?
I also tried to JOIN the comments table with the posts table and use GROUP BY, but I got either only one comment in each row or each comment but also those posts multiple times!?
I tried the solution of the first link (nested mysql_query and then fetch) as well as the second link (with arrays). However, the first caused a bunch of errors (the syntax in that post seems to be not correct and I could not figure out how to solve it) and in the second I had problems with the arrays.
My query looks like this till now:
SELECT p.id, p.title, p.text, u.username, c.country_name, (SELECT SUM(vote_type) FROM votes v WHERE v.post_id = p.id) AS sum_vote_type FROM posts p LEFT JOIN user u ON ( p.user_id = u.id ) LEFT JOIN countries c ON ( c.country_id = u.country_id ) ORDER BY $orderby DESC
I was wondering if this issue was not very common, having posts and comments to show...?
Thank you for every help in advance!
Not knowing your database structure, it should look something like this. Note that you should replace the * characters with more explicit lists of columns you actually need.
SELECT p.*, c.*, u.* FROM posts p
LEFT JOIN comments c ON c.post_id = p.id
LEFT JOIN users u ON u.id = p.author_id
Note that if you're just trying to get counts, sums and things like that it's a good idea to cache some of that information. For instance, you may want to cache the comment count in the post table instead of counting them every query. Only count and update the comment count when adding/removing a comment.
EDIT:
Realized that you also wanted to attach user data to each comment. You can JOIN the same table more than once but it gets ugly. This could turn into a really expensive query. I also am including an example of how to alias columns so it's less confusing:
SELECT p.*, c.*, u.name as post_author, u2.name as comment_author FROM posts p
LEFT JOIN comments c ON c.post_id = p.id
LEFT JOIN users u ON u.id = p.author_id
LEFT JOIN users u2 ON u2.id = c.author_id
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.
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.
I'm working on building a forum with kohana. I know there is already good, free, forum software out there, but it's for a family site, so I thought I'd use it as a learning experience. I'm also not using the ORM that is built into Kohana, as I would like to learn more about SQL in the process of building the forum.
For my forum I have 4 main tables:
USERS
TOPICS
POSTS
COMMENTS
TOPICS table: id (auto incremented), topic row.
USERS table: username, email, first and last name and a few other non related rows
POSTS table: id (auto incremented), post-title, post-body, topic-id, user-id, post-date, updated-date, updated-by(which will contain the user-id of the person who made the most recent comment)
COMMENTS table: id (auto incremented), post-id, user-id and comment
On the main forum page I would like to have:
a list of all of the topics
the number of posts for each topic
the last updated post, and who updated it
the most recently updated topic to be on top, most likely an "ORDER BY updated-date"
Here is the query I have so far:
SELECT topics.id AS topic-id,
topics.topic,
post-user.id AS user-id,
CONCAT_WS(' ', post-user.first-name, post-user.last-name) AS name,
recent-post.id AS post-id,
post-num.post-total,
recent-post.title AS post-title,
recent-post.update_date AS updated-date,
recent-post.updated-by AS updated-by
FROM topics
JOIN (SELECT posts.topic-id,
COUNT(*) AS post-total
FROM POSTS
WHERE posts.topic-id = topic-id
GROUP BY posts.topic-id) AS post-num ON topics.id = post-num.topic-id
JOIN (SELECT posts.*
FROM posts
ORDER BY posts.update-date DESC) AS recent-post ON topics.id = recent-post.topic-id
JOIN (SELECT users.*,
posts.user-id
FROM users, posts
WHERE posts.user-id = users.id) as post-user ON recent-post.user_id = post-user.id
GROUP BY topics.id
This query almost works as it will get all of information for topics that have posts. But it doesn't return the topics that don't have any posts.
I'm sure that the query is inefficient and wrong since it makes two sub-selects to the posts table, but it was the only way I could get to the point I'm at.
Dash is not a valid character in SQL identifiers, but you can use "_" instead.
You don't necessarily have to get everything from a single SQL query. In fact, trying to do so makes it harder to code, and also sometimes makes it harder for the SQL optimizer to execute.
It makes no sense to use ORDER BY in a subquery.
Name your primary key columns topic_id, user_id, and so on (instead of "id" in every table), and you won't have to alias them in the select-list.
Here's how I would solve this:
First get the most recent post per topic, with associated user information:
SELECT t.topic_id, t.topic,
u.user_id, CONCAT_WS(' ', u.first_name, u.last_name) AS full_name,
p.post_id, p.title, p.update_date, p.updated_by
FROM topics t
INNER JOIN
(posts p INNER JOIN users u ON (p.updated_by = u.user_id))
ON (t.topic_id = p.topic_id)
LEFT OUTER JOIN posts p2
ON (p.topic_id = p2.topic_id AND p.update_date < p2.update_date)
WHERE p2.post_id IS NULL;
Then get the counts of posts per topic in a separate, simpler query.
SELECT t.topic_id, COUNT(*) AS post_total
FROM topics t LEFT OUTER JOIN posts p USING (topic_id)
GROUP BY t.topic_id;
Merge the two data sets in your application.
to ensure you get results for topics without posts, you'll need to use LEFT JOIN instead of JOIN for the first join between topics and the next table. LEFT JOIN means "always return a result set row for every row in the left table, even if there's no match with the right table."
Gotta go now, but I'll try to look at the efficiency issues later.
This is a very complicated query. You should note that JOIN statements will limit your topics to those that have posts. If a topic does not have a post, a JOIN statement will filter it out.
Try the following query.
SELECT *
FROM
(
SELECT T.Topic,
COUNT(AllTopicPosts.ID) NumberOfPosts,
MAX(IFNULL(MostRecentPost.Post-Title, '') MostRecentPostTitle,
MAX(IFNULL(MostRecentPostUser.UserName, '') MostRecentPostUser
MAX(IFNULL(MostRecentPost.Updated_Date, '') MostRecentPostDate
FROM TOPICS
LEFT JOIN POSTS AllTopicPosts ON AllTopicPosts.Topic_Id = TOPICS.ID
LEFT JOIN
(
SELECT *
FROM Posts P
WHERE P.Topic_id = TOPICS.id
ORDER BY P.Updated_Date DESC
LIMIT 1
) MostRecentPost ON MostRecentPost.Topic_Id = TOPICS.ID
LEFT JOIN USERS MostRecentPostUser ON MostRecentPostUser.ID = MostRecentPost.User_Id
GROUP BY T.Topic
)
ORDER BY MostRecentPostDate DESC
I'd use a left join inside a subquery to pull back the correct topic, and then you can do a little legwork outside of that to get some of the user info.
select
s.topic_id,
s.topic,
u.user_id as last_updated_by_id,
u.user_name as last_updated_by,
s.last_post,
s.post_count
from
(
select
t.id as topic_id,
t.topic,
t.user_id as orig_poster,
max(coalesce(p.post_date, t.post_date)) as last_post,
count(*) as post_count --would be p.post_id if you don't want to count the topic
from
topics t
left join posts p on
t.id = p.topic_id
group by
t.topic_id,
t.topic,
t.user_id
) s
left join posts p on
s.topic_id = p.topic_id
and s.last_post = p.post_date
and s.post_count > 1 --0 if you're using p.post_id up top
inner join users u on
u.id = coalesce(p.user_id, s.orig_poster)
order by
s.last_post desc
This query does introduce coalesce and left join, and they are very good concepts to look into. For two arguments (like used here), you can also use ifnull in MySQL, since it is functionally equivalent.
Keep in mind that that's exclusive to MySQL (if you need to port this code). Other databases have other functions for that (isnull in SQL Server, nvl in Oracle, etc., etc.). I used coalesce so that I could keep this query all ANSI-fied.