Question

I am sure this is a common task although all of the examples I have looked at dont help me solve this issue.

I have 2 tables:

1. events
2. schedules with foreign key to events. With schedule_datetime_from and schedule_datetime_until

Q. When selecting all of the events, how would I also fetch/join the first closest schedule based on todays date? E.g only return the most relevant schedule.

NOTE: There maybe more than one schedule for each event. The schedule may also be in the past.

E.g e.schedule_datetime_from >= NOW() OR schedule_datetime_until > NOW() would return only the future schedules, but how do I also return schedules in the past. Or do I need to use a ORDER BY + LIMIT 1 to achieve this?

Answer 1

select e.*, s.*
from 
    events e
    inner join 
    schedules s on e.id = s.event_id
order by 
    abs(unix_timestamp(schedule_datetime_from) - unix_timestamp(now())))
limit 1