Question

I have a table with 2 columns

id  status

1   SUBMIT
2   CANCEL
3   UPDATE
4   CANCEL
5   SUBMIT
6   UPDATE

If I do:

select * from table

Can I order the results in the order I want using MySQL?
ASC would be CANCEL,SUBMIT,UPDATE and DESC the reverse. What if I want a different order like SUBMIT,CANCEL,UPDATE? Is it possible?

Answer 1

If I understood correctly, this is what you need:

SELECT * FROM `Table` ORDER BY FIELD(status, 'SUBMIT', 'CANCEL', 'UPDATE');

You can change the order of colum values to correspond your demand.

Here’s the test:
http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/d1885/3