Question

I have a table “A” with a “date” field. I want to make a select query and order the rows with previous dates in a descending order, and then, the rows with next dates in ascending order, all in the same query. Is it possible?

For example, table “A”:

id    date
---------------------
a     march-20
b     march-21
c     march-22
d     march-23
e     march-24

I’d like to get, having as a starting date “march-22”, this result:

id    date
---------------------
c     march-22
b     march-21
a     march-20
d     march-23
e     march-24

In one query, because I’m doing it with two of them and it’s slow, because the only difference is the sorting, and the joins I have to do are a bit “heavy”.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

You could use something like this –

SELECT *
FROM test
ORDER BY IF(
    date <= '2012-03-22', 
    DATEDIFF('2000-01-01', date),
    DATEDIFF(date, '2000-01-01') 
);

Here is a link to a test on SQL Fiddle – http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/31a3f/13