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Order By 1 in MySQL

schedule Aug 12, 2023
Last updated
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MySQL
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The ORDER BY 1 clause in MySQL translates in plain English to order by the first column selected in the SELECT statement. This syntax is not considered good practice as a change in the order of columns could lead to unintentionally ordering by the wrong column.

Example

Consider the following information about some students:

student_id

fname

lname

day_enrolled

age

username

1

Sky

Towner

2015-12-03

17

stowner1

2

Ben

Davis

2016-04-20

19

bdavis2

3

Travis

Apple

2018-08-14

18

tapple3

4

Arthur

David

2016-04-01

16

adavid4

5

Benjamin

Town

2014-01-01

17

btown5

The above sample table can be created using the code here.

To order retrieved results by the second selected column from students table:

SELECT * FROM students
ORDER BY 2;
+------------+----------+--------+--------------+------+----------+
| student_id | fname | lname | day_enrolled | age | username |
+------------+----------+--------+--------------+------+----------+
| 4 | Arthur | David | 2016-04-01 | 16 | adavid4 |
| 2 | Ben | Davis | 2016-04-20 | 19 | bdavis2 |
| 5 | Benjamin | Town | 2014-01-01 | 17 | btown5 |
| 1 | Sky | Towner | 2015-12-03 | 17 | stowner1 |
| 3 | Travis | Apple | 2018-08-14 | 18 | tapple3 |
+------------+----------+--------+--------------+------+----------+

Notice how the results are ordered alphabetically with respect to the second selected column (fname).

To order retrieved results by the third selected column given we only select fname, lname and age:

SELECT fname, lname, age FROM students
ORDER BY 3;
+----------+--------+------+
| fname | lname | age |
+----------+--------+------+
| Arthur | David | 16 |
| Sky | Towner | 17 |
| Benjamin | Town | 17 |
| Travis | Apple | 18 |
| Ben | Davis | 19 |
+----------+--------+------+

Notice how results are ordered in ascending order of the third column (age).

robocat
Published by Arthur Yanagisawa
Edited by 0 others
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