Question

The website contains images. These images can be ranked. When an image is ranked, the value can be 1,2, or 3. To save ranking I have a table ranking_items. The images are displayed as thumbnails. The boss would like me to order them by rank. the problem is, how do I also include images in the result with no entry in the ranking_items?

$db->query("SELECT file_name 
    FROM images, ranking_items 
      WHERE images.id=ranking_items.image_id 
       ORDER BY ranking_items.rank ASC");

Answer 1

When you do FROM table1, table2 you are doing a JOIN.

Try to LEFT JOIN the ranking_items table. This will return all rows, and put NULLS in the places where the join fails.

SELECT file_name 
FROM images
LEFT JOIN ranking_items ON images.id=ranking_items.image_id 
ORDER BY ranking_items.rank ASC