Question

Codeigniter; Active Records Class

From that topic, I asked a question regarding CodeIgniter, I’ve thought of doing it completely raw now instead.

This is my current query.

 SELECT `forums`.*, 
        Count(topics.id) threads, 
        Count(replies.id) replies, 
        `users`.`url` user_url, 
        `users`.`name` user_name,
        `ranks`.`name` user_rank  
 FROM (`forums`)  
 LEFT JOIN `topics` ON `topics`.`f_id` = `forums`.`id`  
 LEFT JOIN `replies` ON `replies`.`t_id` = `topics`.`id`  
 LEFT JOIN `users` ON `users`.`id` = `topics`.`a_id`  
 LEFT JOIN `ranks` ON `users`.`status` = `ranks`.`id`  
 LEFT JOIN (  
 SELECT `topics`.`url` topic_url, `topics`.`name` topic_name  
 FROM `topics`  
 ORDER BY `created` DESC  
 LIMIT 1  
 ) last_post ON `topics`.`f_id` = `forums`.`id`  
 GROUP BY `forums`.`id`

So what I am trying to do is to get everything in one nifty row. Everything beside “Last Post By” is working, if I remove the later LEFT JOIN I added I get the first, and not the last post.

So my question is; What am I now doing wrong?

Also, a bonus question, I talked to a friend earlier that is a bit more knowledgable when it comes to PHP and MySQL than I am, he told me to just store it all in the database, last_post as well as the count of threads and replies.

Thanks in advance.

Update

Here is forums table

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `forums` (  
  `id`    int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,  
  `c_id`  int(11) NOT NULL,  
  `url`   varchar(255) NOT NULL,  
  `name`  varchar(255) NOT NULL,  
  `desc`  text NOT NULL,  
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),  
KEY `url` (`url`,`name`)  
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=9 ;  

Here is topics table

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `topics` (  
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,  
  `f_id`    int(11) NOT NULL,  
  `url`     varchar(255) NOT NULL,  
  `name`    varchar(255) NOT NULL,  
  `desc`    varchar(255) NOT NULL,  
  `body`    text NOT NULL,  
  `a_id`    int(11) NOT NULL,  
  `created` int(11) NOT NULL,  
  `edited`  int(11) NOT NULL,  
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),  
KEY `head` (`name`)  
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=10 ;

I also tried to update how it was displayed with the markdown editing, as I did the first time, I hope this is more appealing.

Answer 1

Here is a solution. I don’t think it is the most efficient solution but it should work. Note that I moved the Topics SELECT to the first SELECT row.

SELECT `forums`.*, 
        Count(topics.id) threads, 
        Count(replies.id) replies, 
        `users`.`url` user_url, 
        `users`.`name` user_name,
        `ranks`.`name` user_rank,
        (SELECT `topics`.`url` 
         FROM `topics` 
         WHERE `topics`.`f_id` = `forums`.`id` 
         ORDER BY `created` DESC LIMIT 1) topic_url,
        (SELECT  `topics`.`name`
         FROM `topics` 
         WHERE `topics`.`f_id` = `forums`.`id` 
         ORDER BY `created` DESC LIMIT 1) topic_name 
 FROM (`forums`) 
 LEFT JOIN `topics` ON `topics`.`f_id` = `forums`.`id`   
 LEFT JOIN `replies` ON `replies`.`t_id` = `topics`.`id`  
 LEFT JOIN `users` ON `users`.`id` = `topics`.`a_id`  
 LEFT JOIN `ranks` ON `users`.`status` = `ranks`.`id`  
 GROUP BY `forums`.`id`

Possible more efficient way

I don’t have the data to test whether this is faster but it is another way of doing it (I based this off of ROW_NUMBER() in MySQL.) This comes with one string attached and that is that the topics table can’t have duplicate f_id,created combinations:

SELECT `forums`.*, 
        Count(topics.id) threads, 
        Count(replies.id) replies, 
        `users`.`url` user_url, 
        `users`.`name` user_name,
        `ranks`.`name` user_rank,
        t.url topic_url,
        t.name topic_name
 FROM (`forums`)  
 LEFT JOIN (SELECT t0.id, t0.f_id, t0.url, t0.name, t0.a_id
            FROM topics AS t0
            LEFT JOIN topics AS t1 ON t0.f_id=t1.f_id AND t1.created>t0.created
            WHERE t1.id IS NULL) AS t
            ON t.f_id = forums.id
 LEFT JOIN `replies` ON `replies`.`t_id` = t.`id`  
 LEFT JOIN `users` ON `users`.`id` = t.`a_id`  
 LEFT JOIN `ranks` ON `users`.`status` = `ranks`.`id` 
 GROUP BY `forums`.`id`

Try it out, first to see if it works, and then to see if it is faster. I’d love to hear back from you.