Содержание
- 3.1. Connecting to and Disconnecting from the Server
- 3.2. Entering Queries
- 3.3. Creating and Using a Database
- 3.4. Getting Information About Databases and Tables
- 3.5. Using mysql in Batch Mode
- 3.6. Examples of Common Queries
- 3.6.1. The Maximum Value for a Column
- 3.6.2. The Row Holding the Maximum of a Certain Column
- 3.6.3. Maximum of Column per Group
- 3.6.4. The Rows Holding the Group-wise Maximum of a Certain Column
- 3.6.5. Using User-Defined Variables
- 3.6.6. Using Foreign Keys
- 3.6.7. Searching on Two Keys
- 3.6.8. Calculating Visits Per Day
- 3.6.9. Using
AUTO_INCREMENT
- 3.7. Using MySQL with Apache
This chapter provides a tutorial introduction to MySQL by showing how to use the mysql client program to create and use a simple database. mysql (sometimes referred to as the “terminal monitor” or just “monitor”) is an interactive program that enables you to connect to a MySQL server, run queries, and view the results. mysql may also be used in batch mode: you place your queries in a file beforehand, then tell mysql to execute the contents of the file. Both ways of using mysql are covered here.
To see a list of options provided by mysql,
invoke it with the --help
option:
shell> mysql --help
This chapter assumes that mysql is installed on your machine and that a MySQL server is available to which you can connect. If this is not true, contact your MySQL administrator. (If you are the administrator, you need to consult the relevant portions of this manual, such as Глава 5, MySQL Server Administration.)
This chapter describes the entire process of setting up and using a database. If you are interested only in accessing an existing database, you may want to skip over the sections that describe how to create the database and the tables it contains.
Because this chapter is tutorial in nature, many details are necessarily omitted. Consult the relevant sections of the manual for more information on the topics covered here.
To connect to the server, you will usually need to provide a MySQL user name when you invoke mysql and, most likely, a password. If the server runs on a machine other than the one where you log in, you will also need to specify a host name. Contact your administrator to find out what connection parameters you should use to connect (that is, what host, user name, and password to use). Once you know the proper parameters, you should be able to connect like this:
shell>mysql -h
Enter password:host
-uuser
-p********
host
and user
represent the
host name where your MySQL server is running and the user name of
your MySQL account. Substitute appropriate values for your setup.
The ********
represents your password; enter it
when mysql displays the Enter
password:
prompt.
If that works, you should see some introductory information
followed by a mysql>
prompt:
shell>mysql -h
Enter password:host
-uuser
-p********
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 25338 to server version: 5.5.22-standard Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer. mysql>
The mysql>
prompt tells you that
mysql is ready for you to enter commands.
If you are logging in on the same machine that MySQL is running on, you can omit the host, and simply use the following:
shell> mysql -u user
-p
If, when you attempt to log in, you get an error message such as ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2), it means that the MySQL server daemon (Unix) or service (Windows) is not running. Consult the administrator or see the section of Глава 2, Installing and Upgrading MySQL that is appropriate to your operating system.
For help with other problems often encountered when trying to log in, see Section C.5.2, “Common Ошибки When Using MySQL Programs”.
Some MySQL installations permit users to connect as the anonymous (unnamed) user to the server running on the local host. If this is the case on your machine, you should be able to connect to that server by invoking mysql without any options:
shell> mysql
After you have connected successfully, you can disconnect any time
by typing QUIT
(or \q
) at
the mysql>
prompt:
mysql> QUIT
Bye
On Unix, you can also disconnect by pressing Control+D.
Most examples in the following sections assume that you are
connected to the server. They indicate this by the
mysql>
prompt.
Make sure that you are connected to the server, as discussed in the previous section. Doing so does not in itself select any database to work with, but that is okay. At this point, it is more important to find out a little about how to issue queries than to jump right in creating tables, loading data into them, and retrieving data from them. This section describes the basic principles of entering commands, using several queries you can try out to familiarize yourself with how mysql works.
Here is a simple command that asks the server to tell you its
version number and the current date. Type it in as shown here
following the mysql>
prompt and press Enter:
mysql> SELECT VERSION(), CURRENT_DATE;
+--------------+--------------+
| VERSION() | CURRENT_DATE |
+--------------+--------------+
| 5.5.0-m2-log | 2009-05-04 |
+--------------+--------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)
mysql>
This query illustrates several things about mysql:
A command normally consists of an SQL statement followed by a semicolon. (There are some exceptions where a semicolon may be omitted.
QUIT
, mentioned earlier, is one of them. We'll get to others later.)When you issue a command, mysql sends it to the server for execution and displays the results, then prints another
mysql>
prompt to indicate that it is ready for another command.mysql displays query output in tabular form (rows and columns). The first row contains labels for the columns. The rows following are the query results. Normally, column labels are the names of the columns you fetch from database tables. If you're retrieving the value of an expression rather than a table column (as in the example just shown), mysql labels the column using the expression itself.
mysql shows how many rows were returned and how long the query took to execute, which gives you a rough idea of server performance. These values are imprecise because they represent wall clock time (not CPU or machine time), and because they are affected by factors such as server load and network latency. (For brevity, the “rows in set” line is sometimes not shown in the remaining examples in this chapter.)
Keywords may be entered in any lettercase. The following queries are equivalent:
mysql>SELECT VERSION(), CURRENT_DATE;
mysql>select version(), current_date;
mysql>SeLeCt vErSiOn(), current_DATE;
Here is another query. It demonstrates that you can use mysql as a simple calculator:
mysql> SELECT SIN(PI()/4), (4+1)*5;
+------------------+---------+
| SIN(PI()/4) | (4+1)*5 |
+------------------+---------+
| 0.70710678118655 | 25 |
+------------------+---------+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)
The queries shown thus far have been relatively short, single-line statements. You can even enter multiple statements on a single line. Just end each one with a semicolon:
mysql> SELECT VERSION(); SELECT NOW();
+--------------+
| VERSION() |
+--------------+
| 5.5.0-m2-log |
+--------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
+---------------------+
| NOW() |
+---------------------+
| 2009-05-04 15:15:00 |
+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
A command need not be given all on a single line, so lengthy commands that require several lines are not a problem. mysql determines where your statement ends by looking for the terminating semicolon, not by looking for the end of the input line. (In other words, mysql accepts free-format input: it collects input lines but does not execute them until it sees the semicolon.)
Here is a simple multiple-line statement:
mysql>SELECT
->USER()
->,
->CURRENT_DATE;
+---------------+--------------+ | USER() | CURRENT_DATE | +---------------+--------------+ | jon@localhost | 2005-10-11 | +---------------+--------------+
In this example, notice how the prompt changes from
mysql>
to ->
after you
enter the first line of a multiple-line query. This is how
mysql indicates that it has not yet seen a
complete statement and is waiting for the rest. The prompt is your
friend, because it provides valuable feedback. If you use that
feedback, you can always be aware of what mysql
is waiting for.
If you decide you do not want to execute a command that you are in
the process of entering, cancel it by typing
\c
:
mysql>SELECT
->USER()
->\c
mysql>
Here, too, notice the prompt. It switches back to
mysql>
after you type \c
,
providing feedback to indicate that mysql is
ready for a new command.
The following table shows each of the prompts you may see and summarizes what they mean about the state that mysql is in.
Prompt | Meaning |
---|---|
mysql> | Ready for new command. |
-> | Waiting for next line of multiple-line command. |
'> | Waiting for next line, waiting for completion of a string that began
with a single quote (“' ”). |
"> | Waiting for next line, waiting for completion of a string that began
with a double quote (“" ”). |
`> | Waiting for next line, waiting for completion of an identifier that
began with a backtick
(“` ”). |
/*> | Waiting for next line, waiting for completion of a comment that began
with /* . |
Multiple-line statements commonly occur by accident when you intend to issue a command on a single line, but forget the terminating semicolon. In this case, mysql waits for more input:
mysql> SELECT USER()
->
If this happens to you (you think you've entered a statement but
the only response is a ->
prompt), most
likely mysql is waiting for the semicolon. If
you don't notice what the prompt is telling you, you might sit
there for a while before realizing what you need to do. Enter a
semicolon to complete the statement, and mysql
executes it:
mysql>SELECT USER()
->;
+---------------+ | USER() | +---------------+ | jon@localhost | +---------------+
The '>
and ">
prompts
occur during string collection (another way of saying that MySQL
is waiting for completion of a string). In MySQL, you can write
strings surrounded by either “'
”
or “"
” characters (for example,
'hello'
or "goodbye"
), and
mysql lets you enter strings that span multiple
lines. When you see a '>
or
">
prompt, it means that you have entered a
line containing a string that begins with a
“'
” or
“"
” quote character, but have not
yet entered the matching quote that terminates the string. This
often indicates that you have inadvertently left out a quote
character. For example:
mysql> SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE name = 'Smith AND age < 30;
'>
If you enter this SELECT
statement,
then press Enter and wait for the result, nothing
happens. Instead of wondering why this query takes so long, notice
the clue provided by the '>
prompt. It tells
you that mysql expects to see the rest of an
unterminated string. (Do you see the error in the statement? The
string 'Smith
is missing the second single
quotation mark.)
At this point, what do you do? The simplest thing is to cancel the
command. However, you cannot just type \c
in
this case, because mysql interprets it as part
of the string that it is collecting. Instead, enter the closing
quote character (so mysql knows you've finished
the string), then type \c
:
mysql>SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE name = 'Smith AND age < 30;
'>'\c
mysql>
The prompt changes back to mysql>
,
indicating that mysql is ready for a new
command.
The `>
prompt is similar to the
'>
and ">
prompts, but
indicates that you have begun but not completed a backtick-quoted
identifier.
It is important to know what the '>
,
">
, and `>
prompts
signify, because if you mistakenly enter an unterminated string,
any further lines you type appear to be ignored by
mysql—including a line containing
QUIT
. This can be quite confusing, especially
if you do not know that you need to supply the terminating quote
before you can cancel the current command.
Once you know how to enter commands, you are ready to access a database.
Suppose that you have several pets in your home (your menagerie) and you would like to keep track of various types of information about them. You can do so by creating tables to hold your data and loading them with the desired information. Then you can answer different sorts of questions about your animals by retrieving data from the tables. This section shows you how to perform the following operations:
Create a database
Create a table
Load data into the table
Retrieve data from the table in various ways
Use multiple tables
The menagerie database is simple (deliberately), but it is not difficult to think of real-world situations in which a similar type of database might be used. For example, a database like this could be used by a farmer to keep track of livestock, or by a veterinarian to keep track of patient records. A menagerie distribution containing some of the queries and sample data used in the following sections can be obtained from the MySQL Web site. It is available in both compressed tar file and Zip formats at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/.
Use the SHOW
statement to find out
what databases currently exist on the server:
mysql> SHOW DATABASES;
+----------+
| Database |
+----------+
| mysql |
| test |
| tmp |
+----------+
The mysql
database describes user access
privileges. The test
database often is
available as a workspace for users to try things out.
The list of databases displayed by the statement may be different
on your machine; SHOW DATABASES
does not show databases that you have no privileges for if you do
not have the SHOW DATABASES
privilege. See Section 12.7.5.15, “SHOW DATABASES
Синтаксис”.
If the test
database exists, try to access it:
mysql> USE test
Database changed
USE
, like QUIT
,
does not require a semicolon. (You can terminate such statements
with a semicolon if you like; it does no harm.) The
USE
statement is special in another
way, too: it must be given on a single line.
You can use the test
database (if you have
access to it) for the examples that follow, but anything you
create in that database can be removed by anyone else with access
to it. For this reason, you should probably ask your MySQL
administrator for permission to use a database of your own.
Suppose that you want to call yours menagerie
.
The administrator needs to execute a command like this:
mysql> GRANT ALL ON menagerie.* TO 'your_mysql_name'@'your_client_host';
where your_mysql_name
is the MySQL user name
assigned to you and your_client_host
is the
host from which you connect to the server.
If the administrator creates your database for you when setting up your permissions, you can begin using it. Otherwise, you need to create it yourself:
mysql> CREATE DATABASE menagerie;
Under Unix, database names are case sensitive (unlike SQL
keywords), so you must always refer to your database as
menagerie
, not as
Menagerie
, MENAGERIE
, or
some other variant. This is also true for table names. (Under
Windows, this restriction does not apply, although you must
refer to databases and tables using the same lettercase
throughout a given query. However, for a variety of reasons, the
recommended best practice is always to use the same lettercase
that was used when the database was created.)
If you get an error such as ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user 'monty'@'localhost' to database 'menagerie' when attempting to create a database, this means that your user account does not have the necessary privileges to do so. Discuss this with the administrator or see Section 5.4, “The MySQL Access Privilege System”.
Creating a database does not select it for use; you must do that
explicitly. To make menagerie
the current
database, use this command:
mysql> USE menagerie
Database changed
Your database needs to be created only once, but you must select
it for use each time you begin a mysql
session. You can do this by issuing a
USE
statement as shown in the
example. Alternatively, you can select the database on the
command line when you invoke mysql. Just
specify its name after any connection parameters that you might
need to provide. For example:
shell>mysql -h
Enter password:host
-uuser
-p menagerie********
menagerie
in the command just shown is
not your password. If you
want to supply your password on the command line after the
-p
option, you must do so with no
intervening space (for example, as
-pmypassword
, not as -p
mypassword
). However, putting your password on the
command line is not recommended, because doing so exposes it
to snooping by other users logged in on your machine.
You can see at any time which database is currently selected
using SELECT
DATABASE()
.
Creating the database is the easy part, but at this point it is
empty, as SHOW TABLES
tells you:
mysql> SHOW TABLES;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
The harder part is deciding what the structure of your database should be: what tables you need and what columns should be in each of them.
You want a table that contains a record for each of your pets.
This can be called the pet
table, and it
should contain, as a bare minimum, each animal's name. Because
the name by itself is not very interesting, the table should
contain other information. For example, if more than one person
in your family keeps pets, you might want to list each animal's
owner. You might also want to record some basic descriptive
information such as species and sex.
How about age? That might be of interest, but it is not a good thing to store in a database. Age changes as time passes, which means you'd have to update your records often. Instead, it is better to store a fixed value such as date of birth. Then, whenever you need age, you can calculate it as the difference between the current date and the birth date. MySQL provides functions for doing date arithmetic, so this is not difficult. Storing birth date rather than age has other advantages, too:
You can use the database for tasks such as generating reminders for upcoming pet birthdays. (If you think this type of query is somewhat silly, note that it is the same question you might ask in the context of a business database to identify clients to whom you need to send out birthday greetings in the current week or month, for that computer-assisted personal touch.)
You can calculate age in relation to dates other than the current date. For example, if you store death date in the database, you can easily calculate how old a pet was when it died.
You can probably think of other types of information that would
be useful in the pet
table, but the ones
identified so far are sufficient: name, owner, species, sex,
birth, and death.
Use a CREATE TABLE
statement to
specify the layout of your table:
mysql>CREATE TABLE pet (name VARCHAR(20), owner VARCHAR(20),
->species VARCHAR(20), sex CHAR(1), birth DATE, death DATE);
VARCHAR
is a good choice for the
name
, owner
, and
species
columns because the column values
vary in length. The lengths in those column definitions need not
all be the same, and need not be 20
. You can
normally pick any length from 1
to
65535
, whatever seems most reasonable to you.
If you make a poor choice and it turns out later that you need a
longer field, MySQL provides an ALTER
TABLE
statement.
Several types of values can be chosen to represent sex in animal
records, such as 'm'
and
'f'
, or perhaps 'male'
and
'female'
. It is simplest to use the single
characters 'm'
and 'f'
.
The use of the DATE
data type for
the birth
and death
columns is a fairly obvious choice.
Once you have created a table, SHOW
TABLES
should produce some output:
mysql> SHOW TABLES;
+---------------------+
| Tables in menagerie |
+---------------------+
| pet |
+---------------------+
To verify that your table was created the way you expected, use
a DESCRIBE
statement:
mysql> DESCRIBE pet;
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| name | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| owner | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| species | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| sex | char(1) | YES | | NULL | |
| birth | date | YES | | NULL | |
| death | date | YES | | NULL | |
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
You can use DESCRIBE
any time,
for example, if you forget the names of the columns in your
table or what types they have.
For more information about MySQL data types, see Глава 10, Data Types.
After creating your table, you need to populate it. The
LOAD DATA
and
INSERT
statements are useful for
this.
Suppose that your pet records can be described as shown here.
(Observe that MySQL expects dates in
'YYYY-MM-DD'
format; this may be different
from what you are used to.)
name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fluffy | Harold | cat | f | 1993-02-04 | |
Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | |
Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | |
Fang | Benny | dog | m | 1990-08-27 | |
Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1979-08-31 | 1995-07-29 |
Chirpy | Gwen | bird | f | 1998-09-11 | |
Whistler | Gwen | bird | 1997-12-09 | ||
Slim | Benny | snake | m | 1996-04-29 |
Because you are beginning with an empty table, an easy way to populate it is to create a text file containing a row for each of your animals, then load the contents of the file into the table with a single statement.
You could create a text file pet.txt
containing one record per line, with values separated by tabs,
and given in the order in which the columns were listed in the
CREATE TABLE
statement. For
missing values (such as unknown sexes or death dates for animals
that are still living), you can use NULL
values. To represent these in your text file, use
\N
(backslash, capital-N). For example, the
record for Whistler the bird would look like this (where the
whitespace between values is a single tab character):
Whistler Gwen bird \N 1997-12-09 \N
To load the text file pet.txt
into the
pet
table, use this statement:
mysql> LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/path/pet.txt' INTO TABLE pet;
If you created the file on Windows with an editor that uses
\r\n
as a line terminator, you should use
this statement instead:
mysql>LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/path/pet.txt' INTO TABLE pet
->LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';
(On an Apple machine running OS X, you would likely want to use
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r'
.)
You can specify the column value separator and end of line
marker explicitly in the LOAD
DATA
statement if you wish, but the defaults are tab
and linefeed. These are sufficient for the statement to read the
file pet.txt
properly.
If the statement fails, it is likely that your MySQL
installation does not have local file capability enabled by
default. See Section 5.3.5, “Security Issues with LOAD
DATA LOCAL
”, for information
on how to change this.
When you want to add new records one at a time, the
INSERT
statement is useful. In
its simplest form, you supply values for each column, in the
order in which the columns were listed in the
CREATE TABLE
statement. Suppose
that Diane gets a new hamster named “Puffball.” You
could add a new record using an
INSERT
statement like this:
mysql>INSERT INTO pet
->VALUES ('Puffball','Diane','hamster','f','1999-03-30',NULL);
String and date values are specified as quoted strings here.
Also, with INSERT
, you can insert
NULL
directly to represent a missing value.
You do not use \N
like you do with
LOAD DATA
.
From this example, you should be able to see that there would be
a lot more typing involved to load your records initially using
several INSERT
statements rather
than a single LOAD DATA
statement.
The SELECT
statement is used to
pull information from a table. The general form of the statement
is:
SELECTwhat_to_select
FROMwhich_table
WHEREconditions_to_satisfy
;
what_to_select
indicates what you
want to see. This can be a list of columns, or
*
to indicate “all columns.”
which_table
indicates the table from
which you want to retrieve data. The WHERE
clause is optional. If it is present,
conditions_to_satisfy
specifies one
or more conditions that rows must satisfy to qualify for
retrieval.
The simplest form of SELECT
retrieves everything from a table:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet;
+----------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+----------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| Fluffy | Harold | cat | f | 1993-02-04 | NULL |
| Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL |
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
| Fang | Benny | dog | m | 1990-08-27 | NULL |
| Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1979-08-31 | 1995-07-29 |
| Chirpy | Gwen | bird | f | 1998-09-11 | NULL |
| Whistler | Gwen | bird | NULL | 1997-12-09 | NULL |
| Slim | Benny | snake | m | 1996-04-29 | NULL |
| Puffball | Diane | hamster | f | 1999-03-30 | NULL |
+----------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
This form of SELECT
is useful
if you want to review your entire table, for example, after
you've just loaded it with your initial data set. For example,
you may happen to think that the birth date for Bowser doesn't
seem quite right. Consulting your original pedigree papers,
you find that the correct birth year should be 1989, not 1979.
There are at least two ways to fix this:
Edit the file
pet.txt
to correct the error, then empty the table and reload it usingDELETE
andLOAD DATA
:mysql>
DELETE FROM pet;
mysql>LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE 'pet.txt' INTO TABLE pet;
However, if you do this, you must also re-enter the record for Puffball.
Fix only the erroneous record with an
UPDATE
statement:mysql>
UPDATE pet SET birth = '1989-08-31' WHERE name = 'Bowser';
The
UPDATE
changes only the record in question and does not require you to reload the table.
As shown in the preceding section, it is easy to retrieve an
entire table. Just omit the WHERE
clause
from the SELECT
statement. But
typically you don't want to see the entire table, particularly
when it becomes large. Instead, you're usually more interested
in answering a particular question, in which case you specify
some constraints on the information you want. Let's look at
some selection queries in terms of questions about your pets
that they answer.
You can select only particular rows from your table. For example, if you want to verify the change that you made to Bowser's birth date, select Bowser's record like this:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name = 'Bowser';
+--------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+--------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1989-08-31 | 1995-07-29 |
+--------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
The output confirms that the year is correctly recorded as 1989, not 1979.
String comparisons normally are case-insensitive, so you can
specify the name as 'bowser'
,
'BOWSER'
, and so forth. The query result is
the same.
You can specify conditions on any column, not just
name
. For example, if you want to know
which animals were born during or after 1998, test the
birth
column:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE birth >= '1998-1-1';
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Chirpy | Gwen | bird | f | 1998-09-11 | NULL |
| Puffball | Diane | hamster | f | 1999-03-30 | NULL |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+-------+
You can combine conditions, for example, to locate female dogs:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE species = 'dog' AND sex = 'f';
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
The preceding query uses the AND
logical operator. There is also an
OR
operator:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE species = 'snake' OR species = 'bird';
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Chirpy | Gwen | bird | f | 1998-09-11 | NULL |
| Whistler | Gwen | bird | NULL | 1997-12-09 | NULL |
| Slim | Benny | snake | m | 1996-04-29 | NULL |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+-------+
AND
and
OR
may be intermixed, although
AND
has higher precedence than
OR
. If you use both operators, it
is a good idea to use parentheses to indicate explicitly how
conditions should be grouped:
mysql>SELECT * FROM pet WHERE (species = 'cat' AND sex = 'm')
->OR (species = 'dog' AND sex = 'f');
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+ | name | owner | species | sex | birth | death | +-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+ | Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL | | Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL | +-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
If you do not want to see entire rows from your table, just
name the columns in which you are interested, separated by
commas. For example, if you want to know when your animals
were born, select the name
and
birth
columns:
mysql> SELECT name, birth FROM pet;
+----------+------------+
| name | birth |
+----------+------------+
| Fluffy | 1993-02-04 |
| Claws | 1994-03-17 |
| Buffy | 1989-05-13 |
| Fang | 1990-08-27 |
| Bowser | 1989-08-31 |
| Chirpy | 1998-09-11 |
| Whistler | 1997-12-09 |
| Slim | 1996-04-29 |
| Puffball | 1999-03-30 |
+----------+------------+
To find out who owns pets, use this query:
mysql> SELECT owner FROM pet;
+--------+
| owner |
+--------+
| Harold |
| Gwen |
| Harold |
| Benny |
| Diane |
| Gwen |
| Gwen |
| Benny |
| Diane |
+--------+
Notice that the query simply retrieves the
owner
column from each record, and some of
them appear more than once. To minimize the output, retrieve
each unique output record just once by adding the keyword
DISTINCT
:
mysql> SELECT DISTINCT owner FROM pet;
+--------+
| owner |
+--------+
| Benny |
| Diane |
| Gwen |
| Harold |
+--------+
You can use a WHERE
clause to combine row
selection with column selection. For example, to get birth
dates for dogs and cats only, use this query:
mysql>SELECT name, species, birth FROM pet
->WHERE species = 'dog' OR species = 'cat';
+--------+---------+------------+ | name | species | birth | +--------+---------+------------+ | Fluffy | cat | 1993-02-04 | | Claws | cat | 1994-03-17 | | Buffy | dog | 1989-05-13 | | Fang | dog | 1990-08-27 | | Bowser | dog | 1989-08-31 | +--------+---------+------------+
You may have noticed in the preceding examples that the result
rows are displayed in no particular order. It is often easier
to examine query output when the rows are sorted in some
meaningful way. To sort a result, use an ORDER
BY
clause.
Here are animal birthdays, sorted by date:
mysql> SELECT name, birth FROM pet ORDER BY birth;
+----------+------------+
| name | birth |
+----------+------------+
| Buffy | 1989-05-13 |
| Bowser | 1989-08-31 |
| Fang | 1990-08-27 |
| Fluffy | 1993-02-04 |
| Claws | 1994-03-17 |
| Slim | 1996-04-29 |
| Whistler | 1997-12-09 |
| Chirpy | 1998-09-11 |
| Puffball | 1999-03-30 |
+----------+------------+
On character type columns, sorting—like all other
comparison operations—is normally performed in a
case-insensitive fashion. This means that the order is
undefined for columns that are identical except for their
case. You can force a case-sensitive sort for a column by
using BINARY
like so:
ORDER BY BINARY
.
col_name
The default sort order is ascending, with smallest values
first. To sort in reverse (descending) order, add the
DESC
keyword to the name of the column you
are sorting by:
mysql> SELECT name, birth FROM pet ORDER BY birth DESC;
+----------+------------+
| name | birth |
+----------+------------+
| Puffball | 1999-03-30 |
| Chirpy | 1998-09-11 |
| Whistler | 1997-12-09 |
| Slim | 1996-04-29 |
| Claws | 1994-03-17 |
| Fluffy | 1993-02-04 |
| Fang | 1990-08-27 |
| Bowser | 1989-08-31 |
| Buffy | 1989-05-13 |
+----------+------------+
You can sort on multiple columns, and you can sort different columns in different directions. For example, to sort by type of animal in ascending order, then by birth date within animal type in descending order (youngest animals first), use the following query:
mysql>SELECT name, species, birth FROM pet
->ORDER BY species, birth DESC;
+----------+---------+------------+ | name | species | birth | +----------+---------+------------+ | Chirpy | bird | 1998-09-11 | | Whistler | bird | 1997-12-09 | | Claws | cat | 1994-03-17 | | Fluffy | cat | 1993-02-04 | | Fang | dog | 1990-08-27 | | Bowser | dog | 1989-08-31 | | Buffy | dog | 1989-05-13 | | Puffball | hamster | 1999-03-30 | | Slim | snake | 1996-04-29 | +----------+---------+------------+
The DESC
keyword applies only to the column
name immediately preceding it (birth
); it
does not affect the species
column sort
order.
MySQL provides several functions that you can use to perform calculations on dates, for example, to calculate ages or extract parts of dates.
To determine how many years old each of your pets is, compute the difference in the year part of the current date and the birth date, then subtract one if the current date occurs earlier in the calendar year than the birth date. The following query shows, for each pet, the birth date, the current date, and the age in years.
mysql>SELECT name, birth, CURDATE(),
->(YEAR(CURDATE())-YEAR(birth))
->- (RIGHT(CURDATE(),5)<RIGHT(birth,5))
->AS age
->FROM pet;
+----------+------------+------------+------+ | name | birth | CURDATE() | age | +----------+------------+------------+------+ | Fluffy | 1993-02-04 | 2003-08-19 | 10 | | Claws | 1994-03-17 | 2003-08-19 | 9 | | Buffy | 1989-05-13 | 2003-08-19 | 14 | | Fang | 1990-08-27 | 2003-08-19 | 12 | | Bowser | 1989-08-31 | 2003-08-19 | 13 | | Chirpy | 1998-09-11 | 2003-08-19 | 4 | | Whistler | 1997-12-09 | 2003-08-19 | 5 | | Slim | 1996-04-29 | 2003-08-19 | 7 | | Puffball | 1999-03-30 | 2003-08-19 | 4 | +----------+------------+------------+------+
Here, YEAR()
pulls out the year
part of a date and RIGHT()
pulls off the rightmost five characters that represent the
MM-DD
(calendar year) part of the date. The
part of the expression that compares the
MM-DD
values evaluates to 1 or 0, which
adjusts the year difference down a year if
CURDATE()
occurs earlier in the
year than birth
. The full expression is
somewhat ungainly, so an alias
(age
) is used to make the output column
label more meaningful.
The query works, but the result could be scanned more easily
if the rows were presented in some order. This can be done by
adding an ORDER BY name
clause to sort the
output by name:
mysql>SELECT name, birth, CURDATE(),
->(YEAR(CURDATE())-YEAR(birth))
->- (RIGHT(CURDATE(),5)<RIGHT(birth,5))
->AS age
->FROM pet ORDER BY name;
+----------+------------+------------+------+ | name | birth | CURDATE() | age | +----------+------------+------------+------+ | Bowser | 1989-08-31 | 2003-08-19 | 13 | | Buffy | 1989-05-13 | 2003-08-19 | 14 | | Chirpy | 1998-09-11 | 2003-08-19 | 4 | | Claws | 1994-03-17 | 2003-08-19 | 9 | | Fang | 1990-08-27 | 2003-08-19 | 12 | | Fluffy | 1993-02-04 | 2003-08-19 | 10 | | Puffball | 1999-03-30 | 2003-08-19 | 4 | | Slim | 1996-04-29 | 2003-08-19 | 7 | | Whistler | 1997-12-09 | 2003-08-19 | 5 | +----------+------------+------------+------+
To sort the output by age
rather than
name
, just use a different ORDER
BY
clause:
mysql>SELECT name, birth, CURDATE(),
->(YEAR(CURDATE())-YEAR(birth))
->- (RIGHT(CURDATE(),5)<RIGHT(birth,5))
->AS age
->FROM pet ORDER BY age;
+----------+------------+------------+------+ | name | birth | CURDATE() | age | +----------+------------+------------+------+ | Chirpy | 1998-09-11 | 2003-08-19 | 4 | | Puffball | 1999-03-30 | 2003-08-19 | 4 | | Whistler | 1997-12-09 | 2003-08-19 | 5 | | Slim | 1996-04-29 | 2003-08-19 | 7 | | Claws | 1994-03-17 | 2003-08-19 | 9 | | Fluffy | 1993-02-04 | 2003-08-19 | 10 | | Fang | 1990-08-27 | 2003-08-19 | 12 | | Bowser | 1989-08-31 | 2003-08-19 | 13 | | Buffy | 1989-05-13 | 2003-08-19 | 14 | +----------+------------+------------+------+
A similar query can be used to determine age at death for
animals that have died. You determine which animals these are
by checking whether the death
value is
NULL
. Then, for those with
non-NULL
values, compute the difference
between the death
and
birth
values:
mysql>SELECT name, birth, death,
->(YEAR(death)-YEAR(birth)) - (RIGHT(death,5)<RIGHT(birth,5))
->AS age
->FROM pet WHERE death IS NOT NULL ORDER BY age;
+--------+------------+------------+------+ | name | birth | death | age | +--------+------------+------------+------+ | Bowser | 1989-08-31 | 1995-07-29 | 5 | +--------+------------+------------+------+
The query uses death IS NOT NULL
rather
than death <> NULL
because
NULL
is a special value that cannot be
compared using the usual comparison operators. This is
discussed later. See Section 3.3.4.6, “Working with NULL
Values”.
What if you want to know which animals have birthdays next
month? For this type of calculation, year and day are
irrelevant; you simply want to extract the month part of the
birth
column. MySQL provides several
functions for extracting parts of dates, such as
YEAR()
,
MONTH()
, and
DAYOFMONTH()
.
MONTH()
is the appropriate
function here. To see how it works, run a simple query that
displays the value of both birth
and
MONTH(birth)
:
mysql> SELECT name, birth, MONTH(birth) FROM pet;
+----------+------------+--------------+
| name | birth | MONTH(birth) |
+----------+------------+--------------+
| Fluffy | 1993-02-04 | 2 |
| Claws | 1994-03-17 | 3 |
| Buffy | 1989-05-13 | 5 |
| Fang | 1990-08-27 | 8 |
| Bowser | 1989-08-31 | 8 |
| Chirpy | 1998-09-11 | 9 |
| Whistler | 1997-12-09 | 12 |
| Slim | 1996-04-29 | 4 |
| Puffball | 1999-03-30 | 3 |
+----------+------------+--------------+
Finding animals with birthdays in the upcoming month is also
simple. Suppose that the current month is April. Then the
month value is 4
and you can look for
animals born in May (month 5
) like this:
mysql> SELECT name, birth FROM pet WHERE MONTH(birth) = 5;
+-------+------------+
| name | birth |
+-------+------------+
| Buffy | 1989-05-13 |
+-------+------------+
There is a small complication if the current month is
December. You cannot merely add one to the month number
(12
) and look for animals born in month
13
, because there is no such month.
Instead, you look for animals born in January (month
1
).
You can write the query so that it works no matter what the
current month is, so that you do not have to use the number
for a particular month.
DATE_ADD()
enables you to add a
time interval to a given date. If you add a month to the value
of CURDATE()
, then extract the
month part with MONTH()
, the
result produces the month in which to look for birthdays:
mysql>SELECT name, birth FROM pet
->WHERE MONTH(birth) = MONTH(DATE_ADD(CURDATE(),INTERVAL 1 MONTH));
A different way to accomplish the same task is to add
1
to get the next month after the current
one after using the modulo function (MOD
)
to wrap the month value to 0
if it is
currently 12
:
mysql>SELECT name, birth FROM pet
->WHERE MONTH(birth) = MOD(MONTH(CURDATE()), 12) + 1;
MONTH()
returns a number
between 1
and 12
. And
MOD(something,12)
returns a
number between 0
and 11
.
So the addition has to be after the
MOD()
, otherwise we would go
from November (11
) to January
(1
).
The NULL
value can be surprising until you
get used to it. Conceptually, NULL
means
“a missing unknown value” and it is treated
somewhat differently from other values.
To test for NULL
, use the
IS NULL
and IS
NOT NULL
operators, as shown here:
mysql> SELECT 1 IS NULL, 1 IS NOT NULL;
+-----------+---------------+
| 1 IS NULL | 1 IS NOT NULL |
+-----------+---------------+
| 0 | 1 |
+-----------+---------------+
You cannot use arithmetic comparison operators such as
=
,
<
, or
<>
to
test for NULL
. To demonstrate this for
yourself, try the following query:
mysql> SELECT 1 = NULL, 1 <> NULL, 1 < NULL, 1 > NULL;
+----------+-----------+----------+----------+
| 1 = NULL | 1 <> NULL | 1 < NULL | 1 > NULL |
+----------+-----------+----------+----------+
| NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL |
+----------+-----------+----------+----------+
Because the result of any arithmetic comparison with
NULL
is also NULL
, you
cannot obtain any meaningful results from such comparisons.
In MySQL, 0
or NULL
means false and anything else means true. The default truth
value from a boolean operation is 1
.
This special treatment of NULL
is why, in
the previous section, it was necessary to determine which
animals are no longer alive using death IS NOT
NULL
instead of death <>
NULL
.
Two NULL
values are regarded as equal in a
GROUP BY
.
When doing an ORDER BY
,
NULL
values are presented first if you do
ORDER BY ... ASC
and last if you do
ORDER BY ... DESC
.
A common error when working with NULL
is to
assume that it is not possible to insert a zero or an empty
string into a column defined as NOT NULL
,
but this is not the case. These are in fact values, whereas
NULL
means “not having a
value.” You can test this easily enough by using
IS [NOT] NULL
as shown:
mysql> SELECT 0 IS NULL, 0 IS NOT NULL, '' IS NULL, '' IS NOT NULL;
+-----------+---------------+------------+----------------+
| 0 IS NULL | 0 IS NOT NULL | '' IS NULL | '' IS NOT NULL |
+-----------+---------------+------------+----------------+
| 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
+-----------+---------------+------------+----------------+
Thus it is entirely possible to insert a zero or empty string
into a NOT NULL
column, as these are in
fact NOT NULL
. See
Section C.5.5.3, “Problems with NULL
Values”.
MySQL provides standard SQL pattern matching as well as a form of pattern matching based on extended regular expressions similar to those used by Unix utilities such as vi, grep, and sed.
SQL pattern matching enables you to use
“_
” to match any single
character and “%
” to match an
arbitrary number of characters (including zero characters). In
MySQL, SQL patterns are case-insensitive by default. Some
examples are shown here. You do not use =
or <>
when you use SQL patterns; use
the LIKE
or
NOT LIKE
comparison operators
instead.
To find names beginning with
“b
”:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name LIKE 'b%';
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
| Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1989-08-31 | 1995-07-29 |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
To find names ending with
“fy
”:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name LIKE '%fy';
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Fluffy | Harold | cat | f | 1993-02-04 | NULL |
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
To find names containing a
“w
”:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name LIKE '%w%';
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL |
| Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1989-08-31 | 1995-07-29 |
| Whistler | Gwen | bird | NULL | 1997-12-09 | NULL |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
To find names containing exactly five characters, use five
instances of the “_
” pattern
character:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name LIKE '_____';
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL |
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
The other type of pattern matching provided by MySQL uses
extended regular expressions. When you test for a match for
this type of pattern, use the
REGEXP
and NOT
REGEXP
operators (or
RLIKE
and
NOT RLIKE
,
which are synonyms).
The following list describes some characteristics of extended regular expressions:
“
.
” matches any single character.A character class “
[...]
” matches any character within the brackets. For example, “[abc]
” matches “a
”, “b
”, or “c
”. To name a range of characters, use a dash. “[a-z]
” matches any letter, whereas “[0-9]
” matches any digit.“
*
” matches zero or more instances of the thing preceding it. For example, “x*
” matches any number of “x
” characters, “[0-9]*
” matches any number of digits, and “.*
” matches any number of anything.A
REGEXP
pattern match succeeds if the pattern matches anywhere in the value being tested. (This differs from aLIKE
pattern match, which succeeds only if the pattern matches the entire value.)To anchor a pattern so that it must match the beginning or end of the value being tested, use “
^
” at the beginning or “$
” at the end of the pattern.
To demonstrate how extended regular expressions work, the
LIKE
queries shown previously are
rewritten here to use REGEXP
.
To find names beginning with
“b
”, use
“^
” to match the beginning of
the name:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name REGEXP '^b';
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
| Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1989-08-31 | 1995-07-29 |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+
If you really want to force a
REGEXP
comparison to be case
sensitive, use the BINARY
keyword
to make one of the strings a binary string. This query matches
only lowercase “b
” at the
beginning of a name:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name REGEXP BINARY '^b';
To find names ending with
“fy
”, use
“$
” to match the end of the
name:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name REGEXP 'fy$';
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Fluffy | Harold | cat | f | 1993-02-04 | NULL |
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
+--------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
To find names containing a
“w
”, use this query:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name REGEXP 'w';
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
| Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL |
| Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1989-08-31 | 1995-07-29 |
| Whistler | Gwen | bird | NULL | 1997-12-09 | NULL |
+----------+-------+---------+------+------------+------------+
Because a regular expression pattern matches if it occurs anywhere in the value, it is not necessary in the previous query to put a wildcard on either side of the pattern to get it to match the entire value like it would be if you used an SQL pattern.
To find names containing exactly five characters, use
“^
” and
“$
” to match the beginning and
end of the name, and five instances of
“.
” in between:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name REGEXP '^.....$';
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL |
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
You could also write the previous query using the
{
(“repeat-n
}n
-times”)
operator:
mysql> SELECT * FROM pet WHERE name REGEXP '^.{5}$';
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| name | owner | species | sex | birth | death |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
| Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL |
| Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL |
+-------+--------+---------+------+------------+-------+
Section 11.5.2, “Regular Expressions”, provides more information about the syntax for regular expressions.
Databases are often used to answer the question, “How often does a certain type of data occur in a table?” For example, you might want to know how many pets you have, or how many pets each owner has, or you might want to perform various kinds of census operations on your animals.
Counting the total number of animals you have is the same
question as “How many rows are in the
pet
table?” because there is one
record per pet. COUNT(*)
counts
the number of rows, so the query to count your animals looks
like this:
mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM pet;
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
| 9 |
+----------+
Earlier, you retrieved the names of the people who owned pets.
You can use COUNT()
if you want
to find out how many pets each owner has:
mysql> SELECT owner, COUNT(*) FROM pet GROUP BY owner;
+--------+----------+
| owner | COUNT(*) |
+--------+----------+
| Benny | 2 |
| Diane | 2 |
| Gwen | 3 |
| Harold | 2 |
+--------+----------+
The preceding query uses GROUP BY
to group
all records for each owner
. The use of
COUNT()
in conjunction with
GROUP BY
is useful for characterizing your
data under various groupings. The following examples show
different ways to perform animal census operations.
Number of animals per species:
mysql> SELECT species, COUNT(*) FROM pet GROUP BY species;
+---------+----------+
| species | COUNT(*) |
+---------+----------+
| bird | 2 |
| cat | 2 |
| dog | 3 |
| hamster | 1 |
| snake | 1 |
+---------+----------+
Number of animals per sex:
mysql> SELECT sex, COUNT(*) FROM pet GROUP BY sex;
+------+----------+
| sex | COUNT(*) |
+------+----------+
| NULL | 1 |
| f | 4 |
| m | 4 |
+------+----------+
(In this output, NULL
indicates that the
sex is unknown.)
Number of animals per combination of species and sex:
mysql> SELECT species, sex, COUNT(*) FROM pet GROUP BY species, sex;
+---------+------+----------+
| species | sex | COUNT(*) |
+---------+------+----------+
| bird | NULL | 1 |
| bird | f | 1 |
| cat | f | 1 |
| cat | m | 1 |
| dog | f | 1 |
| dog | m | 2 |
| hamster | f | 1 |
| snake | m | 1 |
+---------+------+----------+
You need not retrieve an entire table when you use
COUNT()
. For example, the
previous query, when performed just on dogs and cats, looks
like this:
mysql>SELECT species, sex, COUNT(*) FROM pet
->WHERE species = 'dog' OR species = 'cat'
->GROUP BY species, sex;
+---------+------+----------+ | species | sex | COUNT(*) | +---------+------+----------+ | cat | f | 1 | | cat | m | 1 | | dog | f | 1 | | dog | m | 2 | +---------+------+----------+
Or, if you wanted the number of animals per sex only for animals whose sex is known:
mysql>SELECT species, sex, COUNT(*) FROM pet
->WHERE sex IS NOT NULL
->GROUP BY species, sex;
+---------+------+----------+ | species | sex | COUNT(*) | +---------+------+----------+ | bird | f | 1 | | cat | f | 1 | | cat | m | 1 | | dog | f | 1 | | dog | m | 2 | | hamster | f | 1 | | snake | m | 1 | +---------+------+----------+
If you name columns to select in addition to the
COUNT()
value, a GROUP
BY
clause should be present that names those same
columns. Otherwise, the following occurs:
If the
ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY
SQL mode is enabled, an error occurs:mysql>
SET sql_mode = 'ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql>SELECT owner, COUNT(*) FROM pet;
ERROR 1140 (42000): Mixing of GROUP columns (MIN(),MAX(),COUNT()...) with no GROUP columns is illegal if there is no GROUP BY clauseIf
ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY
is not enabled, the query is processed by treating all rows as a single group, but the value selected for each named column is indeterminate. The server is free to select the value from any row:mysql>
SET sql_mode = '';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql>SELECT owner, COUNT(*) FROM pet;
+--------+----------+ | owner | COUNT(*) | +--------+----------+ | Harold | 8 | +--------+----------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
See also Section 11.16.3, “GROUP BY
and HAVING
with Hidden
Columns”.
The pet
table keeps track of which pets you
have. If you want to record other information about them, such
as events in their lives like visits to the vet or when
litters are born, you need another table. What should this
table look like? It needs to contain the following
information:
The pet name so that you know which animal each event pertains to.
A date so that you know when the event occurred.
A field to describe the event.
An event type field, if you want to be able to categorize events.
Given these considerations, the CREATE
TABLE
statement for the event
table might look like this:
mysql>CREATE TABLE event (name VARCHAR(20), date DATE,
->type VARCHAR(15), remark VARCHAR(255));
As with the pet
table, it is easiest to
load the initial records by creating a tab-delimited text file
containing the following information.
name | date | type | remark |
---|---|---|---|
Fluffy | 1995-05-15 | litter | 4 kittens, 3 female, 1 male |
Buffy | 1993-06-23 | litter | 5 puppies, 2 female, 3 male |
Buffy | 1994-06-19 | litter | 3 puppies, 3 female |
Chirpy | 1999-03-21 | vet | needed beak straightened |
Slim | 1997-08-03 | vet | broken rib |
Bowser | 1991-10-12 | kennel | |
Fang | 1991-10-12 | kennel | |
Fang | 1998-08-28 | birthday | Gave him a new chew toy |
Claws | 1998-03-17 | birthday | Gave him a new flea collar |
Whistler | 1998-12-09 | birthday | First birthday |
Load the records like this:
mysql> LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE 'event.txt' INTO TABLE event;
Based on what you have learned from the queries that you have
run on the pet
table, you should be able to
perform retrievals on the records in the
event
table; the principles are the same.
But when is the event
table by itself
insufficient to answer questions you might ask?
Suppose that you want to find out the ages at which each pet
had its litters. We saw earlier how to calculate ages from two
dates. The litter date of the mother is in the
event
table, but to calculate her age on
that date you need her birth date, which is stored in the
pet
table. This means the query requires
both tables:
mysql>SELECT pet.name,
->(YEAR(date)-YEAR(birth)) - (RIGHT(date,5)<RIGHT(birth,5)) AS age,
->remark
->FROM pet INNER JOIN event
->ON pet.name = event.name
->WHERE event.type = 'litter';
+--------+------+-----------------------------+ | name | age | remark | +--------+------+-----------------------------+ | Fluffy | 2 | 4 kittens, 3 female, 1 male | | Buffy | 4 | 5 puppies, 2 female, 3 male | | Buffy | 5 | 3 puppies, 3 female | +--------+------+-----------------------------+
There are several things to note about this query:
The
FROM
clause joins two tables because the query needs to pull information from both of them.When combining (joining) information from multiple tables, you need to specify how records in one table can be matched to records in the other. This is easy because they both have a
name
column. The query uses anON
clause to match up records in the two tables based on thename
values.The query uses an
INNER JOIN
to combine the tables. AnINNER JOIN
permits rows from either table to appear in the result if and only if both tables meet the conditions specified in theON
clause. In this example, theON
clause specifies that thename
column in thepet
table must match thename
column in theevent
table. If a name appears in one table but not the other, the row will not appear in the result because the condition in theON
clause fails.Because the
name
column occurs in both tables, you must be specific about which table you mean when referring to the column. This is done by prepending the table name to the column name.
You need not have two different tables to perform a join.
Sometimes it is useful to join a table to itself, if you want
to compare records in a table to other records in that same
table. For example, to find breeding pairs among your pets,
you can join the pet
table with itself to
produce candidate pairs of males and females of like species:
mysql>SELECT p1.name, p1.sex, p2.name, p2.sex, p1.species
->FROM pet AS p1 INNER JOIN pet AS p2
->ON p1.species = p2.species AND p1.sex = 'f' AND p2.sex = 'm';
+--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | name | sex | name | sex | species | +--------+------+--------+------+---------+ | Fluffy | f | Claws | m | cat | | Buffy | f | Fang | m | dog | | Buffy | f | Bowser | m | dog | +--------+------+--------+------+---------+
In this query, we specify aliases for the table name to refer to the columns and keep straight which instance of the table each column reference is associated with.
What if you forget the name of a database or table, or what the structure of a given table is (for example, what its columns are called)? MySQL addresses this problem through several statements that provide information about the databases and tables it supports.
You have previously seen SHOW
DATABASES
, which lists the databases managed by the
server. To find out which database is currently selected, use the
DATABASE()
function:
mysql> SELECT DATABASE();
+------------+
| DATABASE() |
+------------+
| menagerie |
+------------+
If you have not yet selected any database, the result is
NULL
.
To find out what tables the default database contains (for example, when you are not sure about the name of a table), use this command:
mysql> SHOW TABLES;
+---------------------+
| Tables_in_menagerie |
+---------------------+
| event |
| pet |
+---------------------+
The name of the column in the output produced by this statement is
always
Tables_in_
,
where db_name
db_name
is the name of the
database. See Section 12.7.5.38, “SHOW TABLES
Синтаксис”, for more information.
If you want to find out about the structure of a table, the
DESCRIBE
statement is useful; it
displays information about each of a table's columns:
mysql> DESCRIBE pet;
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| name | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| owner | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| species | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| sex | char(1) | YES | | NULL | |
| birth | date | YES | | NULL | |
| death | date | YES | | NULL | |
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
Field
indicates the column name,
Type
is the data type for the column,
NULL
indicates whether the column can contain
NULL
values, Key
indicates
whether the column is indexed, and Default
specifies the column's default value. Extra
displays special information about columns: If a column was
created with the AUTO_INCREMENT
option, the
value will be auto_increment
rather than empty.
DESC
is a short form of
DESCRIBE
. See
Section 12.8.1, “DESCRIBE
Синтаксис”, for more information.
You can obtain the CREATE TABLE
statement necessary to create an existing table using the
SHOW CREATE TABLE
statement. See
Section 12.7.5.12, “SHOW CREATE TABLE
Синтаксис”.
If you have indexes on a table, SHOW INDEX FROM
produces information
about them. See Section 12.7.5.23, “tbl_name
SHOW INDEX
Синтаксис”, for more about this
statement.
In the previous sections, you used mysql interactively to enter queries and view the results. You can also run mysql in batch mode. To do this, put the commands you want to run in a file, then tell mysql to read its input from the file:
shell> mysql < batch-file
If you are running mysql under Windows and have some special characters in the file that cause problems, you can do this:
C:\> mysql -e "source batch-file
"
If you need to specify connection parameters on the command line, the command might look like this:
shell>mysql -h
Enter password:host
-uuser
-p <batch-file
********
When you use mysql this way, you are creating a script file, then executing the script.
If you want the script to continue even if some of the statements
in it produce errors, you should use the
--force
command-line option.
Why use a script? Here are a few reasons:
If you run a query repeatedly (say, every day or every week), making it a script enables you to avoid retyping it each time you execute it.
You can generate new queries from existing ones that are similar by copying and editing script files.
Batch mode can also be useful while you're developing a query, particularly for multiple-line commands or multiple-statement sequences of commands. If you make a mistake, you don't have to retype everything. Just edit your script to correct the error, then tell mysql to execute it again.
If you have a query that produces a lot of output, you can run the output through a pager rather than watching it scroll off the top of your screen:
shell>
mysql <
batch-file
| moreYou can catch the output in a file for further processing:
shell>
mysql <
batch-file
> mysql.outYou can distribute your script to other people so that they can also run the commands.
Some situations do not allow for interactive use, for example, when you run a query from a cron job. In this case, you must use batch mode.
The default output format is different (more concise) when you run
mysql in batch mode than when you use it
interactively. For example, the output of SELECT DISTINCT
species FROM pet
looks like this when
mysql is run interactively:
+---------+ | species | +---------+ | bird | | cat | | dog | | hamster | | snake | +---------+
In batch mode, the output looks like this instead:
species bird cat dog hamster snake
If you want to get the interactive output format in batch mode,
use mysql -t
. To echo to the output the
commands that are executed, use mysql -vvv
.
You can also use scripts from the mysql prompt
by using the source
command or
\.
command:
mysql>source
mysql>filename
;\.
filename
See Section 4.5.1.5, “Executing SQL Statements from a Text File”, for more information.
- 3.6.1. The Maximum Value for a Column
- 3.6.2. The Row Holding the Maximum of a Certain Column
- 3.6.3. Maximum of Column per Group
- 3.6.4. The Rows Holding the Group-wise Maximum of a Certain Column
- 3.6.5. Using User-Defined Variables
- 3.6.6. Using Foreign Keys
- 3.6.7. Searching on Two Keys
- 3.6.8. Calculating Visits Per Day
- 3.6.9. Using
AUTO_INCREMENT
Here are examples of how to solve some common problems with MySQL.
Some of the examples use the table shop
to hold
the price of each article (item number) for certain traders
(dealers). Supposing that each trader has a single fixed price per
article, then (article
,
dealer
) is a primary key for the records.
Start the command-line tool mysql and select a database:
shell> mysql your-database-name
(In most MySQL installations, you can use the database named
test
).
You can create and populate the example table with these statements:
CREATE TABLE shop ( article INT(4) UNSIGNED ZEROFILL DEFAULT '0000' NOT NULL, dealer CHAR(20) DEFAULT '' NOT NULL, price DOUBLE(16,2) DEFAULT '0.00' NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(article, dealer)); INSERT INTO shop VALUES (1,'A',3.45),(1,'B',3.99),(2,'A',10.99),(3,'B',1.45), (3,'C',1.69),(3,'D',1.25),(4,'D',19.95);
After issuing the statements, the table should have the following contents:
SELECT * FROM shop; +---------+--------+-------+ | article | dealer | price | +---------+--------+-------+ | 0001 | A | 3.45 | | 0001 | B | 3.99 | | 0002 | A | 10.99 | | 0003 | B | 1.45 | | 0003 | C | 1.69 | | 0003 | D | 1.25 | | 0004 | D | 19.95 | +---------+--------+-------+
“What is the highest item number?”
SELECT MAX(article) AS article FROM shop; +---------+ | article | +---------+ | 4 | +---------+
Task: Find the number, dealer, and price of the most expensive article.
This is easily done with a subquery:
SELECT article, dealer, price FROM shop WHERE price=(SELECT MAX(price) FROM shop); +---------+--------+-------+ | article | dealer | price | +---------+--------+-------+ | 0004 | D | 19.95 | +---------+--------+-------+
Other solutions are to use a LEFT JOIN
or to
sort all rows descending by price and get only the first row
using the MySQL-specific LIMIT
clause:
SELECT s1.article, s1.dealer, s1.price FROM shop s1 LEFT JOIN shop s2 ON s1.price < s2.price WHERE s2.article IS NULL; SELECT article, dealer, price FROM shop ORDER BY price DESC LIMIT 1;
If there were several most expensive articles, each with a
price of 19.95, the LIMIT
solution would
show only one of them.
Task: Find the highest price per article.
SELECT article, MAX(price) AS price FROM shop GROUP BY article; +---------+-------+ | article | price | +---------+-------+ | 0001 | 3.99 | | 0002 | 10.99 | | 0003 | 1.69 | | 0004 | 19.95 | +---------+-------+
Task: For each article, find the dealer or dealers with the most expensive price.
This problem can be solved with a subquery like this one:
SELECT article, dealer, price FROM shop s1 WHERE price=(SELECT MAX(s2.price) FROM shop s2 WHERE s1.article = s2.article); +---------+--------+-------+ | article | dealer | price | +---------+--------+-------+ | 0001 | B | 3.99 | | 0002 | A | 10.99 | | 0003 | C | 1.69 | | 0004 | D | 19.95 | +---------+--------+-------+
The preceding example uses a correlated subquery, which can be
inefficient (see Section 12.2.10.7, “Correlated Subqueries”). Other
possibilities for solving the problem are to use an uncorrelated
subquery in the FROM
clause or a
LEFT JOIN
:
SELECT s1.article, dealer, s1.price FROM shop s1 JOIN ( SELECT article, MAX(price) AS price FROM shop GROUP BY article) AS s2 ON s1.article = s2.article AND s1.price = s2.price;
SELECT s1.article, s1.dealer, s1.price FROM shop s1 LEFT JOIN shop s2 ON s1.article = s2.article AND s1.price < s2.price WHERE s2.article IS NULL;
The LEFT JOIN
works on the basis that when
s1.price
is at its maximum value, there is no
s2.price
with a greater value and the
s2
rows values will be
NULL
. See Section 12.2.9.2, “JOIN
Синтаксис”.
You can employ MySQL user variables to remember results without having to store them in temporary variables in the client. (See Section 8.4, “User-Defined Variables”.)
For example, to find the articles with the highest and lowest price you can do this:
mysql>SELECT @min_price:=MIN(price),@max_price:=MAX(price) FROM shop;
mysql>SELECT * FROM shop WHERE price=@min_price OR price=@max_price;
+---------+--------+-------+ | article | dealer | price | +---------+--------+-------+ | 0003 | D | 1.25 | | 0004 | D | 19.95 | +---------+--------+-------+
It is also possible to store the name of a database object such as a table or a column in a user variable and then to use this variable in an SQL statement; however, this requires the use of a prepared statement. See Section 12.5, “SQL Синтаксис for Prepared Statements”, for more information.
In MySQL, InnoDB
tables support checking of
foreign key constraints. See
Section 13.3, “The InnoDB
Storage Engine”, and
Section 1.8.5.4, “Foreign Key Differences”.
A foreign key constraint is not required merely to join two
tables. For storage engines other than
InnoDB
, it is possible when defining a column
to use a REFERENCES
clause, which has no actual effect, and serves only as
a memo or comment to you that the column which you are currently
defining is intended to refer to a column in another
table. It is extremely important to realize when
using this syntax that:
tbl_name
(col_name
)
MySQL does not perform any sort of
CHECK
to make sure thatcol_name
actually exists intbl_name
(or even thattbl_name
itself exists).MySQL does not perform any sort of action on
tbl_name
such as deleting rows in response to actions taken on rows in the table which you are defining; in other words, this syntax induces noON DELETE
orON UPDATE
behavior whatsoever. (Although you can write anON DELETE
orON UPDATE
clause as part of theREFERENCES
clause, it is also ignored.)This syntax creates a column; it does not create any sort of index or key.
You can use a column so created as a join column, as shown here:
CREATE TABLE person ( id SMALLINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name CHAR(60) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ); CREATE TABLE shirt ( id SMALLINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, style ENUM('t-shirt', 'polo', 'dress') NOT NULL, color ENUM('red', 'blue', 'orange', 'white', 'black') NOT NULL, owner SMALLINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL REFERENCES person(id), PRIMARY KEY (id) ); INSERT INTO person VALUES (NULL, 'Antonio Paz'); SELECT @last := LAST_INSERT_ID(); INSERT INTO shirt VALUES (NULL, 'polo', 'blue', @last), (NULL, 'dress', 'white', @last), (NULL, 't-shirt', 'blue', @last); INSERT INTO person VALUES (NULL, 'Lilliana Angelovska'); SELECT @last := LAST_INSERT_ID(); INSERT INTO shirt VALUES (NULL, 'dress', 'orange', @last), (NULL, 'polo', 'red', @last), (NULL, 'dress', 'blue', @last), (NULL, 't-shirt', 'white', @last); SELECT * FROM person; +----+---------------------+ | id | name | +----+---------------------+ | 1 | Antonio Paz | | 2 | Lilliana Angelovska | +----+---------------------+ SELECT * FROM shirt; +----+---------+--------+-------+ | id | style | color | owner | +----+---------+--------+-------+ | 1 | polo | blue | 1 | | 2 | dress | white | 1 | | 3 | t-shirt | blue | 1 | | 4 | dress | orange | 2 | | 5 | polo | red | 2 | | 6 | dress | blue | 2 | | 7 | t-shirt | white | 2 | +----+---------+--------+-------+ SELECT s.* FROM person p INNER JOIN shirt s ON s.owner = p.id WHERE p.name LIKE 'Lilliana%' AND s.color <> 'white'; +----+-------+--------+-------+ | id | style | color | owner | +----+-------+--------+-------+ | 4 | dress | orange | 2 | | 5 | polo | red | 2 | | 6 | dress | blue | 2 | +----+-------+--------+-------+
When used in this fashion, the REFERENCES
clause is not displayed in the output of
SHOW CREATE TABLE
or
DESCRIBE
:
SHOW CREATE TABLE shirt\G *************************** 1. row *************************** Table: shirt Create Table: CREATE TABLE `shirt` ( `id` smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment, `style` enum('t-shirt','polo','dress') NOT NULL, `color` enum('red','blue','orange','white','black') NOT NULL, `owner` smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
The use of REFERENCES
in this way as a
comment or “reminder” in a column definition works
with MyISAM
tables.
An OR
using a single key is well
optimized, as is the handling of
AND
.
The one tricky case is that of searching on two different keys
combined with OR
:
SELECT field1_index, field2_index FROM test_table WHERE field1_index = '1' OR field2_index = '1'
This case is optimized. See Section 7.13.2, “Index Merge Optimization”.
You can also solve the problem efficiently by using a
UNION
that combines the output of
two separate SELECT
statements.
See Section 12.2.9.4, “UNION
Синтаксис”.
Each SELECT
searches only one key
and can be optimized:
SELECT field1_index, field2_index FROM test_table WHERE field1_index = '1' UNION SELECT field1_index, field2_index FROM test_table WHERE field2_index = '1';
The following example shows how you can use the bit group functions to calculate the number of days per month a user has visited a Web page.
CREATE TABLE t1 (year YEAR(4), month INT(2) UNSIGNED ZEROFILL, day INT(2) UNSIGNED ZEROFILL); INSERT INTO t1 VALUES(2000,1,1),(2000,1,20),(2000,1,30),(2000,2,2), (2000,2,23),(2000,2,23);
The example table contains year-month-day values representing visits by users to the page. To determine how many different days in each month these visits occur, use this query:
SELECT year,month,BIT_COUNT(BIT_OR(1<<day)) AS days FROM t1 GROUP BY year,month;
Which returns:
+------+-------+------+ | year | month | days | +------+-------+------+ | 2000 | 01 | 3 | | 2000 | 02 | 2 | +------+-------+------+
The query calculates how many different days appear in the table for each year/month combination, with automatic removal of duplicate entries.
The AUTO_INCREMENT
attribute can be used to
generate a unique identity for new rows:
CREATE TABLE animals ( id MEDIUMINT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name CHAR(30) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=MyISAM; INSERT INTO animals (name) VALUES ('dog'),('cat'),('penguin'), ('lax'),('whale'),('ostrich'); SELECT * FROM animals;
Which returns:
+----+---------+ | id | name | +----+---------+ | 1 | dog | | 2 | cat | | 3 | penguin | | 4 | lax | | 5 | whale | | 6 | ostrich | +----+---------+
No value was specified for the AUTO_INCREMENT
column, so MySQL assigned sequence numbers automatically. You
can also explicitly assign NULL
or 0 to the
column to generate sequence numbers.
You can retrieve the most recent
AUTO_INCREMENT
value with the
LAST_INSERT_ID()
SQL function or
the mysql_insert_id()
C API
function. These functions are connection-specific, so their
return values are not affected by another connection which is
also performing inserts.
Use a large enough integer data type for the
AUTO_INCREMENT
column to hold the maximum
sequence value you will need. When the column reaches the upper
limit of the data type, the next attempt to generate a sequence
number fails. For example, if you use
TINYINT
, the maximum permissible
sequence number is 127. For
TINYINT
UNSIGNED
, the maximum is 255.
For a multiple-row insert,
LAST_INSERT_ID()
and
mysql_insert_id()
actually
return the AUTO_INCREMENT
key from the
first of the inserted rows. This enables
multiple-row inserts to be reproduced correctly on other
servers in a replication setup.
For MyISAM
tables you can specify
AUTO_INCREMENT
on a secondary column in a
multiple-column index. In this case, the generated value for the
AUTO_INCREMENT
column is calculated as
MAX(
. This
is useful when you want to put data into ordered groups.
auto_increment_column
)
+ 1 WHERE
prefix=given-prefix
CREATE TABLE animals ( grp ENUM('fish','mammal','bird') NOT NULL, id MEDIUMINT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name CHAR(30) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (grp,id) ) ENGINE=MyISAM; INSERT INTO animals (grp,name) VALUES ('mammal','dog'),('mammal','cat'), ('bird','penguin'),('fish','lax'),('mammal','whale'), ('bird','ostrich'); SELECT * FROM animals ORDER BY grp,id;
Which returns:
+--------+----+---------+ | grp | id | name | +--------+----+---------+ | fish | 1 | lax | | mammal | 1 | dog | | mammal | 2 | cat | | mammal | 3 | whale | | bird | 1 | penguin | | bird | 2 | ostrich | +--------+----+---------+
In this case (when the AUTO_INCREMENT
column
is part of a multiple-column index),
AUTO_INCREMENT
values are reused if you
delete the row with the biggest
AUTO_INCREMENT
value in any group. This
happens even for MyISAM
tables, for which
AUTO_INCREMENT
values normally are not
reused.
If the AUTO_INCREMENT
column is part of
multiple indexes, MySQL will generate sequence values using the
index that begins with the AUTO_INCREMENT
column, if there is one. For example, if the
animals
table contained indexes
PRIMARY KEY (grp, id)
and INDEX
(id)
, MySQL would ignore the PRIMARY
KEY
for generating sequence values. As a result, the
table would contain a single sequence, not a sequence per
grp
value.
To start with an AUTO_INCREMENT
value other
than 1, you can set that value with CREATE
TABLE
or ALTER TABLE
,
like this:
mysql> ALTER TABLE tbl AUTO_INCREMENT = 100;
More information about AUTO_INCREMENT
is
available here:
How to assign the
AUTO_INCREMENT
attribute to a column: Section 12.1.17, “CREATE TABLE
Синтаксис”, and Section 12.1.7, “ALTER TABLE
Синтаксис”.How
AUTO_INCREMENT
behaves depending on theNO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO
SQL mode: Section 5.1.6, “Server SQL Modes”.How to use the
LAST_INSERT_ID()
function to find the row that contains the most recentAUTO_INCREMENT
value: Section 11.14, “Information Functions”.Setting the
AUTO_INCREMENT
value to be used: Section 5.1.3, “Server System Variables”.AUTO_INCREMENT
and replication: Section 15.4.1.1, “Replication andAUTO_INCREMENT
”.Server-system variables related to
AUTO_INCREMENT
(auto_increment_increment
andauto_increment_offset
) that can be used for replication: Section 5.1.3, “Server System Variables”.
There are programs that let you authenticate your users from a MySQL database and also let you write your log files into a MySQL table.
You can change the Apache logging format to be easily readable by MySQL by putting the following into the Apache configuration file:
LogFormat \ "\"%h\",%{%Y%m%d%H%M%S}t,%>s,\"%b\",\"%{Content-Type}o\", \ \"%U\",\"%{Referer}i\",\"%{User-Agent}i\""
To load a log file in that format into MySQL, you can use a statement something like this:
LOAD DATA INFILE '/local/access_log
' INTO TABLEtbl_name
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"' ESCAPED BY '\\'
The named table should be created to have columns that correspond
to those that the LogFormat
line writes to the
log file.