Question

I currently have a query similar to:

SELECT users.fname, users.lname, sales.date 
FROM users
LEFT JOIN sales ON users.id=sales.user

And this gives me the result of something like:

Fname | Lname | Date

Jeff  | K     | 2/12/08
Jeff  | K     | 5/18/08
Jeff  | K     | 2/22/09
Bill  | D     | 3/12/08
Bill  | D     | 12/9/08

This is what I pretty much expect since I have multiple sales linking to a user but I would like to have only one user listed (and maybe a way to pick which sales field that single result picks from) Is this possible and how would I go about doing this?

ie:

Fname | Lname | Date

Jeff  | K     | 5/18/08
Bill  | D     | 12/9/08

Answer 1

SELECT users.fname, users.lname, MAX(sales.date)
FROM users
LEFT JOIN sales ON users.id=sales.user
GROUP BY users.fname, users.lname

or if you want more fields from the sales table:

SELECT users.fname, users.lname, sales.date, sales.proft
FROM users
LEFT JOIN sales ON users.id=sales.user
AND sales.date = (SELECT MAX(sales.date) FROM sales WHERE user = users.id)