Question

I need to do what to me is an advanced sort. I have this two tables:

Table: Fruit  

fruitid | received | basketid  
  1       20100310   2  
  2       20091205   3  
  3       20100220   1  
  4       20091129   2  

Table: Basket  
id | name  
1    Big Discounts  
2    Premium Fruit  
3    Standard Produce  

I’m not even sure I can plainly state how I want to sort (which is probably a big part of the reason I can’t seem to write code to do it, lol).

I do a join query and need to sort so everything is organized by basketid. The basketid that has the oldest fruit.received date comes first, then the other rows with the same basketid by date asc, then the basketid with the next earliest fruit.received date followed by the other rows with the same basketid, and so on.

So the output would look like this:

Fruitid | Received  |   Basket  
   4      20091129      Premuim Fruit  
   1      20100310      Premuim Fruit  
   2      20091205      Standard Produce  
   3      20100220      Big Discounts  

Any ideas how to accomplish this in a single execution?

Answer 1

try this (sql server table setup code, but query should work in any database)

DECLARE @Fruit table (fruitid int, received int, basketid int)
INSERT @Fruit VALUES(1,       20100310,   2 )
INSERT @Fruit VALUES(2,       20091205,   3 )
INSERT @Fruit VALUES(3,       20100220,   1 )
INSERT @Fruit VALUES(4,       20091129,   2 )

DECLARE @Basket table (id int,basket varchar(20))
INSERT @Basket VALUES (1,    'Big Discounts'  )
INSERT @Basket VALUES (2,    'Premium Fruit'  )
INSERT @Basket VALUES (3,    'Standard Produce')


SELECT
    f.Fruitid ,f.received,b.basket  
    FROM @Fruit f
      INNER JOIN (SELECT
                      basketid, MIN(received) AS received
                      FROM @Fruit
                      GROUP BY basketid  
                 ) o ON f.basketid = o.basketid
      INNER JOIN @Basket b ON o.basketid=b.id
    ORDER BY o.received

OUTPUT

Fruitid     received    basket
----------- ----------- --------------------
4           20091129    Premium Fruit
1           20100310    Premium Fruit
2           20091205    Standard Produce
3           20100220    Big Discounts

(4 row(s) affected)