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Asked: 2026-05-27T06:52:40+00:00

Is it possible to sort in MySQL by "order by" using a predefined set

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Is it possible to sort in MySQL by "order by" using a predefined set of column values (ID) like order by (ID=1,5,4,3) so I would get records 1, 5, 4, 3 in that order out?

UPDATE: Why I need this…

I want my records to change sort randomly every 5 minutes. I have a cron task to update the table to put different, random sort order in it.

There is just one problem! PAGINATION.

I will have visitors who come to my page, and I will give them the first 20 results. They will wait 6 minutes, go to page 2 and have the wrong results as the sort order has already changed.

So I thought that if I put all the IDs into a session on page 2, we get the correct records even if the sorting had already changed.

Is there any other better way to do this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can use ORDER BY and FIELD function.
    See http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/209784

    SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY FIELD(ID,1,5,4,3)

    It uses Field() function, Which “Returns the index (position) of str in the str1, str2, str3, … list. Returns 0 if str is not found” according to the documentation. So actually you sort the result set by the return value of this function which is the index of the field value in the given set.

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