Question

I’m trying to do some report line chart graphs and find it easiest if I return one data row from my query for each column (date) of data that will appear in a line chart. The challenge is that I want more than one line.

Here is what I can do with a simplified example of data:

    |  DATE      | SALES | LOCATION |
    | 2012-01-07 | 500   | 1        |
    | 2012-01-07 | 600   | 2        |
    | 2012-01-14 | 700   | 1        |
    | 2012-01-14 | 400   | 2        |
    | 2012-01-21 | 450   | 1        |
    | 2012-01-21 | 550   | 2        |

SELECT date, sum(sales) as SalesTotal1 FROM TABLE WHERE location = ‘1’ group by date

Which returns:

    |     DATE   | SalesTotal1 |
    | 2012-01-07 |     500     |
    | 2012-01-14 |     700     |
    | 2012-01-21 |     450     |

That’s fine if I just have one line in my graph but what I really want in more than one alias of the same column still grouped by date that would return this:

    |     DATE   | SalesTotal1 | SalesTotal2 |
    | 2012-01-07 |     500     |     600     |
    | 2012-01-14 |     700     |     400     |
    | 2012-01-21 |     450     |     550     |

Is this possible? Sub query? I’ve tried many things, thanks ~

Answer 1

You could do something like:

SELECT `date`, 
       SUM(IF(location=1,sales,0)) As SalesTotal1,
       SUM(IF(location=2,sales,0)) As SalesTotal2
FROM my_table
GROUP BY `date`

You’d have to add in as many columns as there are locations though, and if you have many locations it would be annoying. Perhaps you could consider doing the re-arranging on the code side (if you have many, many locations)?