Question

I am trying to do a mysql query to select some news stories from a table, now the key is I always need 5 results.

so I was hoping to be able to pad out my results with another where clause ie

select * from here where this = 1
if there is < 5 results then select * from here where this = 2
limit [how ever many we are short say the first query brings back 3 results this should bring back 2]

Now I’ve looked at using a union to do this but without outside help ie from php and another query to count the results I don’t think it is possible, I know I could simply use php to do this, and will probably end up doing that, but I was just wondering if what I am trying to do is possible with one mysql query?

EDIT:

also it needs to order by date but they are not really posted in order so

order by date get upto 5 where this = 1 and if there isn’t 5 pad it out with the remainder of where this = 2 also ordered by date.

Another Shameful Edit:

ask a silly question lol… it was my sleep deprivation I just assumed there was data in the table and the previous coder was using unions to do all sorts of stuff, making me think it was more complex than it should be

SELECT *
FROM
 news
WHERE
 ( this = 45 || this= 0 )
AND
 active =  '1'
ORDER BY
 this ASC,
 date_added DESC
LIMIT 5

Answer 1

How about –

SELECT *
FROM here
WHERE this < 5 -- added this WHERE clause based on the idea that there will be at least one item per this
ORDER BY this ASC, `date` ASC
LIMIT 5;

Or are you after the five results then being sorted by date again –

SELECT *
FROM (
    SELECT *
    FROM here
    WHERE this < 5 -- added this WHERE clause based on the idea that there will be at least one item per this
    ORDER BY this ASC, `date` ASC
    LIMIT 5
) AS tmp
ORDER BY `date` ASC