MySQL return first row of a joined table

Question

I have two tables (country & ducks) where the country table has every country in the world and the ducks table has a list of ducks with a country_id field to link to the

Answer 1

You might try:

SELECT c.*, d.*
FROM country c
INNER JOIN (
    SELECT d.country_id, d.id, MAX(d.rating) AS rating
    FROM ducks d
    GROUP BY d.country_id
) q ON (q.country_id = c.id)

INNER JOIN ducks d 
    ON (d.country_id, d.rating) = (q.country_id, q.rating)