Question

My table:

id | elite | pos
1  |   0   |  9  
2  |   1   |  8
3  |   0   |  7
4  |   1   |  6
5  |   0   |  5
6  |   1   |  4
7  |   0   |  3
8  |   1   |  2
9  |   0   |  1
10 |   1   |  0

I have this simple query

SELECT id, elite FROM tbl LIMIT 0, 5 ORDER BY pos DESC

It will return the id 1 2 3 4 5. Over time, these values were to change. The result must have always a count of 5, however if on the result there are at least one id with an elite >= 1, the result must not contain any more id with an elite having the 1 value. So the result must not contain id having more than one elite >= 1.

Is this possible within a query?

Answer 1

You can use UNION to combine two queries, like so:

(SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE elite = 1 LIMIT 1)
UNION
(SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE elite = 0)
ORDER BY pos DESC LIMIT 5

It will give the results you need.
Check out Mysql reference for UNIONs