Question

i have a database with 3 tables in a many-to-many relationship. one is the books, the other is the authors and the third is their junction (used to join the two). the database is MySQL

a book can be made by many authors, and authors make many books.

now i want to get the books (with authors) like say 8 books at a time. i made this query:

//first table
SELECT * FROM `books`

//join the junction 
LEFT JOIN books_authors ON books.book_id = books_authors.book_id

//join the authors
LEFT JOIN authors ON books_authors.author_id = authors.author_id

//limit to 8, start at S
limit S, 8

works fine when one-to-one. but when a book has more authors, like say 3 each, the sql result will have 8 x 3 rows in total (due to the 2D nature of the result) for all the details. but the query still clips it to 8 – i don’t get all the details.

how to get 8 books with all details?

Answer 1

You could limit the number of books in a subquery:

select  * 
from    (
        select  *
        from    books
        limit   6, 7
        ) b
left join 
        ba ba
on      b.book_id = ba.book_id
left join 
        authors a
on      ba.author_id = a.author_id