Question

I have a MySQL table containing userID,score .
A single user can have many scores, but there can be many users, of course.

I want to retrieve the highest score for-each of the userID‘s in the database.

I’ve tried the following but I feel like i’m in the wrong way :

SELECT DISTINCT(`userID`), `score` FROM `myTable` ORDER BY `score` DESC

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Shai.

Answer 1

You want the aggregate function max with the group by clause:

select
    userid,
    max(score) as maxscore
from
    mytable
group by userid
order by maxscore desc

The group by says, “Hey, MySQL, get me the max score, but partition it by userid.” This way, you get the max score for each userid.

Additionally, you can order by the aliased column so you get the list of users by max score, descending (for a leaderboard or what have you).