Order a MySQL table by two columns

How do I sort a MySQL table by two columns?

What I want are articles sorted by highest ratings first, then most recent date. As an example, this would be a sample output (left # is the rating, then the article title, then the article date)

+================+=============================+==============+
| article_rating | article                     | article_time |
+================+=============================+==============+
| 50             | This article rocks          | Feb 4, 2009  |
+----------------+-----------------------------+--------------+
| 35             | This article is pretty good | Feb 1, 2009  |
+----------------+-----------------------------+--------------+
| 5              | This Article isn't so hot   | Jan 25, 2009 |
+================+=============================+==============+

The relevant SQL I’m using is:

ORDER BY article_rating, article_time DESC

I can sort by one or the other, but not both.

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

Default sorting is ascending, you need to add the keyword DESC to both your orders:

ORDER BY article_rating DESC, article_time DESC

Method 2

ORDER BY article_rating, article_time DESC

will sort by article_time only if there are two articles with the same rating. From all I can see in your example, this is exactly what happens.

↓ primary sort                         secondary sort ↓
1.  50 | This article rocks          | Feb 4, 2009    3.
2.  35 | This article is pretty good | Feb 1, 2009    2.
3.  5  | This Article isn't so hot   | Jan 25, 2009   1.

but consider:

↓ primary sort                         secondary sort ↓
1.  50 | This article rocks          | Feb 2, 2009    3.
1.  50 | This article rocks, too     | Feb 4, 2009    4.
2.  35 | This article is pretty good | Feb 1, 2009    2.
3.  5  | This Article isn't so hot   | Jan 25, 2009   1.

Method 3

ORDER BY article_rating ASC , article_time DESC

DESC at the end will sort by both columns descending. You have to specify ASC if you want it otherwise

Method 4

This maybe help somebody who is looking for the way to sort table by two columns, but in paralel way. This means to combine two sorts using aggregate sorting function. It’s very useful when for example retrieving articles using fulltext search and also concerning the article publish date.

This is only example, but if you catch the idea you can find a lot of aggregate functions to use. You can even weight the columns to prefer one over second. The function of mine takes extremes from both sorts, thus the most valued rows are on the top.

Sorry if there exists simplier solutions to do this job, but I haven’t found any.

SELECT
 `id`,
 `text`,
 `date`
 FROM
   (
   SELECT
     k.`id`,
     k.`text`,
     k.`date`,
     k.`match_order_id`,
     @row := @row + 1 as `date_order_id`
     FROM
     (
       SELECT
         t.`id`,
         t.`text`,
         t.`date`,
         @row := @row + 1 as `match_order_id`
         FROM
         (
           SELECT
             `art_id` AS `id`,
             `text`   AS `text`,
             `date`   AS `date`,
             MATCH (`text`) AGAINST (:string) AS `match`
             FROM int_art_fulltext
             WHERE MATCH (`text`) AGAINST (:string IN BOOLEAN MODE)
             LIMIT 0,101
         ) t,
         (
           SELECT @row := 0
         ) r
         ORDER BY `match` DESC
     ) k,
     (
       SELECT @row := 0
     ) l
     ORDER BY k.`date` DESC
   ) s
 ORDER BY (1/`match_order_id`+1/`date_order_id`) DESC

Method 5

The following will order your data depending on both column in descending order.

ORDER BY article_rating DESC, article_time DESC

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0