How to have a custom sort order for a union query in Postgres

Question

With a query like this (simplified for clarity):

SELECT \'East\' AS name, *
FROM events 
WHERE event_timestamp BETWEEN \'2015-06-14 06:15:00\' AND \'2015-06-21 0         


        

Answer 1

I'd add an extra column showing the desired ordering, then use ordinal column positions in the ORDER BY, e.g.

SELECT 1, 'East' AS name, *
...
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'West' AS name, *
...
ORDER BY 1

Note that you probably also want UNION ALL since your added columns ensure that every set in the union must be distinct anyway.

Answer 2

Wrap it in a derived table (which is what "HINT: .... or move the UNION into a FROM clause" is suggesting)

select *
from (
  ... your union goes here ... 
) t
order by
    CASE
        WHEN name='East' THEN 1 
        WHEN name='West' THEN 2
        WHEN name='Both' THEN 3
        ELSE 4
    END;

Answer 3

By adding an extra column for ordering purpose, however it makes the UNION clause to work exactly as a UNION ALL (it does not eliminate duplicate rows from the result).