How to select the first row for each group in MySQL?

Jader Dias picture Jader Dias · Apr 29, 2010 · Viewed 148.1k times · Source

In C# it would be like this:

table
   .GroupBy(row => row.SomeColumn)
   .Select(group => group
       .OrderBy(row => row.AnotherColumn)
       .First()
   )

Linq-To-Sql translates it to the following T-SQL code:

SELECT [t3].[AnotherColumn], [t3].[SomeColumn]
FROM (
    SELECT [t0].[SomeColumn]
    FROM [Table] AS [t0]
    GROUP BY [t0].[SomeColumn]
    ) AS [t1]
OUTER APPLY (
    SELECT TOP (1) [t2].[AnotherColumn], [t2].[SomeColumn]
    FROM [Table] AS [t2]
    WHERE (([t1].[SomeColumn] IS NULL) AND ([t2].[SomeColumn] IS NULL))
      OR (([t1].[SomeColumn] IS NOT NULL) AND ([t2].[SomeColumn] IS NOT NULL)
        AND ([t1].[SomeColumn] = [t2].[SomeColumn]))
    ORDER BY [t2].[AnotherColumn]
    ) AS [t3]
ORDER BY [t3].[AnotherColumn]

But it is incompatible with MySQL.

Answer

lfagundes picture lfagundes · Apr 29, 2010

I based my answer on the title of your post only, as I don't know C# and didn't understand the given query. But in MySQL I suggest you try subselects. First get a set of primary keys of interesting columns then select data from those rows:

SELECT somecolumn, anothercolumn 
  FROM sometable 
 WHERE id IN (
               SELECT min(id) 
                 FROM sometable 
                GROUP BY somecolumn
             );