Question

I have a complex MYSQL query which I run from multiple sources of data and that can be ordered depending on the request ( so record id is not much help ).

I want to add a unique ID column at the completion of the data each time the query is run so I can enable pagenation capability of the data.

If I was doing this at the database level I could use id INTEGER AUTO_INCREMENT but this is about doing the addition on the fly every time a query has run.

Answer 1

You can do this:

SELECT
  *, (@rownum := @rownum + 1) rank
FROM YourcomplexQuery, (SELECT @rownum := 0) t;

However, you can use the MySQL built in function LIMIT:

SELECT --
FROM Yourtable
ORDER BY SomeField
LIMIt 0, n;