MySQL: How do I join same table multiple times?

Question

I have two tables ticket and attr. Table ticket has ticked_id field and several other fields. Table attr has 3 fields:

ticket_id - numeric
attr_type - numeric
attr_val - string

attr_type is a fixed enum of values. For example, it can be 1, 2 or 3.

I need to make a query, the result of which will be 4 columns:

ticket_id, attr_val for attr_type=1, attr_val for attr_type=2, attr_val for attr_type=3

If there is no corresponding value for attr_type in attr table then NULL value should be shown in corresponding column.

Example:

ticket
    ticket_id: 1

    ticket_id: 2

    ticket_id: 3


attr
    ticket_id: 1
    attr_type: 1
    attr_val: Foo

    ticket_id: 1
    attr_type: 2
    attr_val: Bar

    ticket_id: 1
    attr_type: 3
    attr_val: Egg

    ticket_id: 2
    attr_type: 2
    attr_val: Spam

the result should be:

ticked_id: 1
attr_val1: Foo
attr_val2: Bar
attr_val3: Egg

ticked_id: 2
attr_val1: NULL
attr_val2: Spam
attr_val3: NULL

ticked_id: 3
attr_val1: NULL
attr_val2: NULL
attr_val3: NULL

I tried left joining attr table 3 times, but cannot figure out how to arrange output by attr_type

Answer 1

You need to use multiple LEFT JOINs:

SELECT 
    ticket.ticket_id,  
    a1.attr_val AS attr_val1,
    a2.attr_val AS attr_val2,
    a3.attr_val AS attr_val3
FROM ticket
    LEFT JOIN attr a1 ON ticket.ticket_id=a1.ticket_id AND a1.attr_type=1
    LEFT JOIN attr a2 ON ticket.ticket_id=a2.ticket_id AND a2.attr_type=2
    LEFT JOIN attr a3 ON ticket.ticket_id=a3.ticket_id AND a3.attr_type=3

Here is an example: SQL Fiddle.