Question

I have been searching for an existing question for this one, but i am not sure what to search for. I am looking for a way to order my results based on a list of id’s and a second variable.

Imagine the following record set

user_id  user_name
------------------
   1       Peter
   2       John
   3       Luke
   4       Tim
   5       George
   6       Michael
   ~       etcetera

Now, I have a list of user ids (lets say 1,4,5) that I want the result of my query to start with.

So i thought:

 // Edit: replaced 'AND' with ','
 SELECT * FROM `user` ORDER BY `user_id` IN (1,4,5), `name`

Would return something like:

user_id  user_name
------------------
   1       Peter   <-- Notice the 1,4,5 at the top
   4       Tim
   5       George
   2       John    <-- After that its just alphabetical
   3       Luke
   6       Michael
   ~       etcetera

But it doesn’t.. It looks like it just ignores the sorting directives. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? Is it even possible to do something like this?

Answer 1

Try this:

 SELECT * 
        FROM    `user` 
    ORDER BY 
        CASE 
            WHEN `user_id` IN (1,4,5) THEN 1
            ELSE `user_id`
        END,
        `name`