Question

Hi, I have a table called msgsubjects with a schema shown below. Basically it holds messages for users. The field viewstatus is used to show if a message has been read/not. if its 0, msg is unread and 1 if message has been viewed.

id  int(11)         No      auto_increment                          
    ownerid int(11)         No                                  
    posterid    int(11)         No                                  
    viewstatus  int(11)         No                                  
    bodyid  int(11)         No                                  
    subject varchar(255)    utf8_general_ci     No                                   
    date    int(11)

This is my current sql to pull these results.

$q=sprintf("SELECT * FROM msgsubjects WHERE ownerid=%d ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT %d,%d",$curid,$start,$end);

Want I want to do is have my results returned grouped having unread messages shown first regardless, I want the groups to still be ordered by date. Can this be done with sql? I know I can do this with php but sql would be more efficient.

Answer 1

You are wanting to sort the messages by the viewstatus column

$q=sprintf("SELECT * FROM msgsubjects WHERE ownerid=%d ORDER BY viewstatus ASC, date DESC LIMIT %d,%d",$curid,$start,$end);