Question

I have a field in my table which contains categories data eg

Computer > Mouse
Computer > Keyboard
Archived Game > Strategy
PS3 > Game > sports

when I pull them out of the table I strip all but the last word using:

$category = trim(substr($databack20[main_category], strrpos($databack20[main_category], '>') + 1));

Which works perfectly.

I need to pull these out of the table, in name order

So currently I get:

Archived Game > Strategy
Computer > Keyboard
Computer > Mouse
PS3 > Game > Sports

But the order I need is:

Keyboard
Mouse
Sports
Strategy

Is there a way to do this within the query? If so how, if not is there another way?

Answer 1

While I do agree with the answers, you should split out the string into separate fields, you can sort it as you’d like, although performance will not be very good. Try this

ORDER BY LCASE(RIGHT(main_category, LOCATE('>', REVERSE(main_category) ) ))