Question

I’m working with an external CSV product feed that is imported into a database, the results of each row are displayed to the end-user in a comparison table.

A particular column holds numerous details that I wish to sort by independently. The feed/table structure cannot be changed.

Example of the db feed table:

MODEL    | SPECIFICATIONS                                            | AGE
Car 1A   | 1000 miles recorded, 10 previous owners, No tax included  | 3 years
Car 1B   | 1000 miles recorded, 5 previous owners, No tax included   | 5 years
Car 1C   | 6000 miles recorded, 7 previous owners, No tax included   | 5 years
Bike 1D  | 3000 miles recorded, 5 previous owners, 100 tax included  | 4 years

Currently my mysql_query uses an ‘ORDER BY model’ statement.

I’d like to display the comparison table sorted by the number of ‘previous owners’ within the SPECIFICATIONS column.

Is there a way to do this within an ORDER BY statement?

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

I tested your table setup in a dummy MySQL database and came up with the following solution.

SELECT *, CAST(TRIM(SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(specifications, ',', -2), ' ', 2)) as unsigned integer) as previousowners  
FROM dbfeed    
ORDER BY previousowners;    

It assumes that the specifications field has at least two sections separated by , and that there is a space between the number of owners and the text “previous owners”.