Question

What is the proper syntax to combine these two queries?

SELECT clicks FROM clicksTable WHERE clicks > 199 ORDER BY clicks ASC LIMIT 1

and

SELECT clicks FROM clicksTable ORDER BY clicks DESC LIMIT 1

I tried:

SELECT clicks FROM clicksTable WHERE clicks > 199 ORDER BY clicks ASC LIMIT 1
UNION
SELECT clicks FROM clicksTable ORDER BY clicks DESC LIMIT 1;

but I get “Incorrect usage of UNION and ORDER BY”.

EDIT
Additionally, I want the result to be returned in a single row. So that I can access the value in php eg

$row['nextclick'] and $row['topclick'] 

From Simon’s suggestion, I should not use UNION because I want to return a single row of data

Answer 1

You can’t ORDER BY in your first SELECT and then UNION it.

Edit
You can however

apply ORDER BY or LIMIT to an individual SELECT, place the clause inside the parentheses that enclose the SELECT:

as in the MySQL UNION documentation

(SELECT a FROM t1 WHERE a=10 AND B=1 ORDER BY a LIMIT 10)
UNION
(SELECT a FROM t2 WHERE a=11 AND B=2 ORDER BY a LIMIT 10);

Which then makes your SQL

(SELECT clicks FROM clicksTable WHERE clicks > 199 ORDER BY clicks ASC LIMIT 1)
UNION
(SELECT clicks FROM clicksTable ORDER BY clicks DESC LIMIT 1);

Edit 2
To return in an array

SELECT (SELECT clicks 
        FROM clicksTable 
        WHERE clicks > 199 
        ORDER BY clicks ASC 
        LIMIT 1) AS NextClick,
       (SELECT clicks 
        FROM clicksTable 
        ORDER BY clicks DESC 
        LIMIT 1) AS TopClick;