I've seen some similar types of questions on SO, however, I have not been able to find a solution to my specific issue. (FYI, these are not my real columns, just a shortened example).
I have a basic table:
`my_table`
user_1 user_2 timestamp
======================================================
23 25 2012-08-10 22:00:00
24 22 2012-08-10 19:00:00 <=== I would like to return this row
24 22 2012-08-10 17:00:00
21 17 2012-08-10 15:00:00
So, what I want to do is be able to:
1) Select the "newest" row, based on timestamp AND
2) Select the 'user_2' column when given a value.
I have tried something like:
SELECT *
FROM my_table
WHERE user_2 = 22
AND timestamp = (
SELECT MAX( timestamp )
FROM my_table )
LIMIT 1
But this does not return the row I am looking for. Any help on fixing this query would be great.
Thanks very much.
SELECT * FROM my_table -- standard stuff
WHERE user_2 = 22 -- predicate
ORDER BY timestamp DESC -- this means highest number (most recent) first
LIMIT 1; -- just want the first row
Edit:
By the way, in case you're curious why your original query didn't work, let's break down the pieces:
- select some stuff from
my_table
...
- where
user_2
= 22
- and
timestamp
= (some value, let's put it aside for now)
- limit 1
Now, coming back to that timestamp
value, it comes from your subquery:
SELECT MAX( timestamp ) FROM my_table
Note that this subquery doesn't restrict any rows based on user_2
-- it asks for what's the max timestamp in the whole table. That max timestamp is the first one in your table above: (user_1 = 23, user_2 = 25, timestamp = 2012-08-10 22:00:00).
So, let's plug that back to the top-level query:
- select some stuff from
my_table
...
- where user_2 = 22
- and timestamp = 2012-08-10 22:00:00
- limit 1
... and you can see there isn't such a row.
If someone has a similar problem in SQL Server, this will work for you (the suggested MySQL query in the previous post doesn't work in SQL Server):
SELECT * FROM my_table
WHERE timestamp = ( SELECT MAX( timestamp ) FROM my_table
WHERE user_2 = 22 )
Another method is to GROUP BY
the user_2
column as you calculate MAX(timestamp)
. Doing so will make MAX(timestamp)
calculate not the latest date in the entire table, but rather the latest timestamp for each group of records with the same user_2
value.
So, for example, your query could be:
SELECT * FROM my_table
WHERE user_2 = 22
AND timestamp =
(SELECT MAX(timestamp) FROM my_table
WHERE user_2 = 22
GROUP BY user_2)
LIMIT 1;
This query is adapted from the answer I found in this excellent answer.
This is all i got.
SELECT timestamp
FROM my_table
WHERE user_22 = '22'
ORDER BY timestamp DESC /*or ASC*/
And when you query it the codewould be
while($row = mysql_fetch_array(the sql query)){
$timestamp = $row['timestamp']
}