MySql Query: Select top 3 rows from table for each category

Question

I have a table with records and it has a row called category. I have inserted too many articles and I want to select only two articles from each category.

Answer 1

Use group by instead of order by.

Answer 2

SELECT * FROM (   
    SELECT  VD.`cat_id` ,  
       @cat_count := IF( (@cat_id = VD.`cat_id`), @cat_count + 1, 1 ) AS 'DUMMY1', 
       @cat_id := VD.`cat_id` AS 'DUMMY2',
       @cat_count AS 'CAT_COUNT'   
     FROM videos VD   
     INNER JOIN categories CT ON CT.`cat_id` = VD.`cat_id`  
       ,(SELECT @cat_count :=1, @cat_id :=-1) AS CID  
     ORDER BY VD.`cat_id` ASC ) AS `CAT_DETAILS`
     WHERE `CAT_COUNT` < 4

------- STEP FOLLOW ----------  
1 . select * from ( 'FILTER_DATA_HERE' ) WHERE 'COLUMN_COUNT_CONDITION_HERE' 
2.  'FILTER_DATA_HERE'   
    1. pass 2 variable @cat_count=1 and  @cat_id = -1  
    2.  If (@cat_id "match" column_cat_id value)  
        Then  @cat_count = @cat_count + 1    
        ELSE @cat_count = 1      
    3. SET @cat_id = column_cat_id    

 3. 'COLUMN_COUNT_CONDITION_HERE'   
    1. count_column < count_number    

4. ' EXTRA THING '
   1. If you want to execute more than one statement inside " if stmt "
   2. IF(condition, stmt1 , stmt2 )
      1. stmt1 :- CONCAT(exp1, exp2, exp3) 
      2. stmt2 :- CONCAT(exp1, exp2, exp3) 
   3. Final "If" Stmt LIKE 
      1. IF ( condition , CONCAT(exp1, exp2, exp3) , CONCAT(exp1, exp2, exp3) )    
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Answer 3

LIMIT only stops the number of results the statement returns. What you're looking for is generally called analytic/windowing/ranking functions - which MySQL doesn't support but you can emulate using variables:

SELECT x.*
  FROM (SELECT t.*,
               CASE 
                 WHEN @category != t.category THEN @rownum := 1 
                 ELSE @rownum := @rownum + 1 
               END AS rank,
               @category := t.category AS var_category
          FROM TBL_ARTIKUJT t
          JOIN (SELECT @rownum := NULL, @category := '') r
      ORDER BY t.category) x
 WHERE x.rank <= 3

If you don't change SELECT x.*, the result set will include the rank and var_category values - you'll have to specify the columns you really want if this isn't the case.