Question

I have this data, in a table categories

id | name | post_count
 1 | A    | 10
 2 | B    | 15
 3 | C    | 8
 4 | D    | 14
 5 | E    | 1
 6 | F    | 20

I want to fetch the top 4 categories, by post_count, and order them by name.

If I do

SELECT * FROM categories ORDER BY post_count DESC LIMIT 4

I’ll get the categories in order: F, B, D, A, while I want A, B, D, F

Is this possible with a single SQL query? How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use sub-query:

SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM 
               categories ORDER BY 
               post_count DESC LIMIT 4) AS A
ORDER BY name 

See this SQLFiddle