Question

I was just wondering if anybody would be able to help me with a SQL join as I’m fairly new to MySQL. I’m looking to join two tables, here my tables and what I’m looking for the end result to look like, thanks in advance!

TABLE ARTICLES 
article_id    title    body            date       category     author
1             Lorem    Lorem ipsum..   1/1/2013   1            Mitchell

TABLE CATEGORIES
category_id   category
1             Web Design

SQL STATEMENT

select categories.category_id, categories.category as category
from categories left outer join articles on categories.category = articles.category

SQL RESULT I’M LOOKING FOR

article_id    title    body            date       category     author
1             Lorem    Lorem ipsum..   1/1/2013   Web Design   Mitchell

Answer 1

Your joining ON condition should be between categories.category_id and articles.category. Otherwise, you just need to add more columns to your SELECT list, as you’re nearly there.

SELECT
  article_id,
  title,
  body,
  date,
  categories.category,
  author
FROM
  articles
  LEFT JOIN categories ON articles.category = categories.category_id

Here it is in action: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/0e0c1/1

I note that you have listed your date in the format m/d/yyyy here instead of YYYY-MM-DD which is MySQL’s default output. If that is indeed how you have stored it in your table (as a VARCHAR() rather than a proper DATE type), I would recommend changing that strategy before you get too far into the project to change it easily.