With MySQL, how can I generate a column containing the record index in a table?

Question

Is there any way I can get the actual row number from a query?

I want to be able to order a table called league_girl by a field called score; and return the username

Answer 1

Assuming MySQL supports it, you can easily do this with a standard SQL subquery:

select 
    (count(*) from league_girl l1 where l2.score > l1.score and l1.id <> l2.id) as position,
    username,
    score
from league_girl l2
order by score;

For large amounts of displayed results, this will be a bit slow and you will want to switch to a self join instead.

Answer 2

Here comes the structure of template I used:

  select
          /*this is a row number counter*/
          ( select @rownum := @rownum + 1 from ( select @rownum := 0 ) d2 ) 
          as rownumber,
          d3.*
  from 
  ( select d1.* from table_name d1 ) d3

And here is my working code:

select     
           ( select @rownum := @rownum + 1 from ( select @rownum := 0 ) d2 ) 
           as rownumber,
           d3.*
from
(   select     year( d1.date ), month( d1.date ), count( d1.id )
    from       maindatabase d1
    where      ( ( d1.date >= '2013-01-01' ) and ( d1.date <= '2014-12-31' ) )
    group by   YEAR( d1.date ), MONTH( d1.date ) ) d3

Answer 3

I found the original answer incredibly helpful but I also wanted to grab a certain set of rows based on the row numbers I was inserting. As such, I wrapped the entire original answer in a subquery so that I could reference the row number I was inserting.

SELECT * FROM 
( 
    SELECT *, @curRow := @curRow + 1 AS "row_number"
    FROM db.tableName, (SELECT @curRow := 0) r
) as temp
WHERE temp.row_number BETWEEN 1 and 10;

Having a subquery in a subquery is not very efficient, so it would be worth testing whether you get a better result by having your SQL server handle this query, or fetching the entire table and having the application/web server manipulate the rows after the fact.

Personally my SQL server isn't overly busy, so having it handle the nested subqueries was preferable.

Answer 4

I know the OP is asking for a mysql answer but since I found the other answers not working for me,

• Most of them fail with order by
• Or they are simply very inefficient and make your query very slow for a fat table

So to save time for others like me, just index the row after retrieving them from database

example in PHP:

$users = UserRepository::loadAllUsersAndSortByScore();

foreach($users as $index=>&$user){
    $user['rank'] = $index+1;
}

example in PHP using offset and limit for paging:

$limit = 20; //page size
$offset = 3; //page number

$users = UserRepository::loadAllUsersAndSortByScore();

foreach($users as $index=>&$user){
    $user['rank'] = $index+1+($limit*($offset-1));
}

Answer 5

SELECT @i:=@i+1 AS iterator, t.*
FROM tablename t,(SELECT @i:=0) foo

Answer 6

You can also use

SELECT @curRow := ifnull(@curRow,0) + 1 Row, ...

to initialise the counter variable.