Ordering in a MySQL GROUP_CONCAT with a function in it

sql mysql sql-order-by group-concat
acme picture acme · Oct 16, 2009 · Viewed 20.8k times · Source

I want to order the results in a GROUP_CONCAT function. The problem is, that the selection in the GROUP_CONCAT-function is another function, like this (fantasy select):

SELECT a.name,
    GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT CONCAT_WS(':', b.id, c.name) ORDER BY b.id ASC) AS course
FROM people a, stuff b, courses c
GROUP BY a.id

I want to get a result like (ordered by b.id):

michael    1:science,2:maths,3:physics

but I get:

michael    2:maths,1:science,3:physics

Does anyone know how I can order by b.id in my group_concat here?

Answer

Jazzy picture Jazzy · Nov 3, 2012

If anyone cares, I think I found a solution for at least a similar problem.

http://mahmudahsan.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/mysql-the-group_concat-function/

select GROUP_CONCAT(columnName order by someColumn SEPARATOR '|') from tableName where fieldId = p.id

The order by goes in the group_concat BEFORE the separator if there is one.

Related questions

How does MySQL process ORDER BY and LIMIT in a query?

I have a query that looks like this: SELECT article FROM table1 ORDER BY publish_date LIMIT 20 How does ORDER BY work? Will it order all records, then get the first 20, or will it get 20 records and order them by …

Read More
MySQL "Group By" and "Order By"

I want to be able to select a bunch of rows from a table of e-mails and group them by the from sender. My query looks like this: SELECT `timestamp`, `fromEmail`, `subject` FROM `incomingEmails` GROUP BY LOWER(`fromEmail`) ORDER BY `…

Read More
SQL order string as number

I have numbers saved as VARCHAR to a MySQL database. I can not make them INT due to some other depending circumstances. It is taking them as character not as number while sorting. In database I have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10... On my page …

Read More