How to reference generated/aliased table in same query? - mysql

Question

I want to find a user's position in a leaderboard and return the 4 users above and 4 users below their position.
My table, 'predictions', looks something like this:
+----+---------+--------+-------+---------+
| id | userId | score | rank | gameId |
+----+---------+--------+-------+---------+
| 1 | 12 | 11 | 1 | 18 |
| 2 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 18 |
| 3 | 43 | 7 | 3 | 12 |
| 4 | 4 | 9 | 2 | 18 |
| 5 | 98 | 2 | 5 | 19 |
| 6 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 18 |
+----+---------+--------+-------+---------+
Obviously this isn't properly ordered, so I run this:
SELECT l.userId,
l.rank,
l.score,
l.createdAt,
#curRow := #curRow + 1 AS row_number
FROM (SELECT * FROM `predictions` WHERE gameId = 18) l
JOIN (SELECT #curRow := 0) r
ORDER BY rank ASC
which gets me a nice table with each entry numbered.
I then want to search this generated table, find the row_number where userId = X, and then return the values 'around' that result.
I think I have the logic of the query down, I just can't work out how to reference the table 'generated' by the above query.
It would be something like this:
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT l.userId,
l.rank,
l.score,
l.createdAt,
#curRow := #curRow + 1 AS row_number
FROM (SELECT * FROM `predictions` WHERE gameId = 18) l
JOIN (SELECT #curRow := 0) r
ORDER BY rank ASC) generated_ordered_table
WHERE row_number < (SELECT row_number FROM generated_ordered_table WHERE userId = 1)
ORDER BY row_number DESC
LIMIT 0,5
This fails. What I'm trying to do is to generate my first table with the correct query, give it an alias of generated_ordered_table, and then reference this 'table' later on in this query.
How do I do this?

Answer 1

MySQL version 8+ could have allowed the usage of Window functions, and Common Table Expressions (CTEs); which would have simplified the query quite a bit.
Now, in the older versions (your case), the "Generated Rank Table" (Derived Table) cannot be referenced again in a subquery inside the WHERE clause. One way would be to do the same thing twice (select clause to get generated table) again inside the subquery, but that would be relatively inefficient.
So, another approach can be to use Temporary Tables. We create a temp table first storing the ranks. And, then reference that temp table to get results accordingly:
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE IF NOT EXISTS gen_rank_tbl AS
(SELECT l.userId,
l.rank,
l.score,
l.createdAt,
#curRow := #curRow + 1 AS row_number
FROM (SELECT * FROM `predictions` WHERE gameId = 18) l
JOIN (SELECT #curRow := 0) r
ORDER BY rank ASC)
Now, you can reference this temp table to get the desired results:
SELECT *
FROM gen_rank_tbl
WHERE row_number < (SELECT row_number FROM gen_rank_tbl WHERE userId = 1)
ORDER BY row_number DESC
LIMIT 0,5

Answer 2

You could use a bunch of unions
select userid,rank,'eq'
from t where gameid = 18 and userid = 1
union
(
select userid,rank,'lt'
from t
where gameid = 18 and rank < (select rank from t t1 where t1.userid = 1 and t1.gameid = t.gameid)
order by rank desc limit 4
)
union
(
select userid,rank,'gt'
from t
where gameid = 18 and rank > (select rank from t t1 where t1.userid = 1 and t1.gameid = t.gameid)
order by rank desc limit 4
);
+--------+------+----+
| userid | rank | eq |
+--------+------+----+
| 1 | 4 | eq |
| 4 | 2 | lt |
| 12 | 1 | lt |
| 3 | 6 | gt |
+--------+------+----+
4 rows in set (0.04 sec)
But it's not pretty

Answer 3

You can use two derived tables:
SELECT p.*,
(#user_curRow = CASE WHEN user_id = #x THEN rn END) as user_rn
FROM (SELECT p.*, #curRow := #curRow + 1 AS rn
FROM (SELECT p.*
FROM predictions p
WHERE p.gameId = 18
ORDER BY rank ASC
) p CROSS JOIN
(SELECT #curRow := 0, #user_curRow := -1) params
) p
HAVING rn BETWEEN #user_curRow - 4 AND #user_currow + 4;