Question

I have a table with site visits with the following columns:

timestamp
host
url

I would like to see the last few (say 200) visits but at the same time group visits of the same host together (to see the sequence of pages he/she visits).

If I do:

... SORT BY timestamp DESC, host

I get hosts mixed up if several visitors are online at the same time

If I do:

... SORT BY host, timestamp DESC

I do not get the latest visits (just the latest visits from each host)

I would like to see e.g.

9:01 | a.com | /index
9:05 | a.com | /interesting
9:07 | a.com | /contact
9:02 | b.com | /index
9:03 | b.com | /product-a
9:08 | b.com | /thanks-for-buying

Is that possible in Mysql or should I further process the result in php?

Answer 1

The answers above pointed my in the right direction, thanks. This one works. The LIMIT 1000 is to reduce the query from almost 3 minutes to 7 seconds (40000 records).

SELECT v1.stamp, v1.host FROM visits AS v1 
   LEFT JOIN (SELECT MIN(date) AS firstVisit, host
              FROM visitor AS v2 
              GROUP BY v2.host
              ORDER BY firstVisit DESC
              LIMIT 1000) AS j
       ON v1.host=j.host 
       ORDER BY firstVisit DESC, v1.host, v1.date DESC
       LIMIT 100;