mysql select rows including related - mysql

Question

I have table:
id | parent | regno | person
1 | 0 | 12 | 5
2 | 1 | 12 | 15
3 | 0 | 13 | 5
4 | 0 | 14 | 6
I have MySQL query...
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE person='5';
...that returns rows 1 and 3.
In this table row 1 and 2 are related (same regno).
How can i build this query to include related rows?
Basically when searching for person 5 i need MySQL query to return following:
id | parent | regno | person
1 | 0 | 12 | 5
2 | 1 | 12 | 15
3 | 0 | 13 | 5
Parent column has id of column it is related to, but it can be positive and negative integer. All related rows always have same regno.
Thank you.

Answer 1

You want all people who have a regno that is the same as the regno of anyone who is person 5:
--this main query finds all people with the regno from the subquery
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE regno IN
( --this subquery finds the list of regno
SELECT regno
FROM table
WHERE person = '5'
)
There are other ways to write this; i'm not a fan of IN, and personally would write it like this:
SELECT t.*
FROM table t
INNER JOIN
(
SELECT DISTINCT regno
FROM table
WHERE person = '5'
) u
WHERE t.regno = u.regno
But it's harder to understand, and it's quite likely that these queries would end up being executed identically internally anyway. In this form the DISTINCT is required to make the regno from the subquery unique. If it were not, joined rows would end up duplicated. Why do I prefer it over IN? In some database systems IN's implementation can be very naive and low performing. "Never use IN to create a list longer then you would write by hand" is an old mantra I tend to stick to. This join pattern is also more flexible, can work with multiple values. Not every database supports Oracle-esque where x,y in ((1,3),(3,4)) value multiples
As an aside (and partly in response to the first comment on this answer) it would be more typical and more useful/usual to have the database prepare a set of rows that had parent and child data on the same line
It would look more like this:
SELECT *
FROM
table c
LEFT OUTER JOIN
table p
ON c.regno = p.regno AND p.parent = 1
WHERE c.person = '5' AND c.parent=0
This is assuming your "parent" column is 0 1 indicating true false.. you seem to have made a comment that parent is the id of the relative (not sure if it's parent-of or parent-is)
For a table where there is an id, and parentid column, and the parentid is set to a value when the row is a child of that other id;
id, parentid, name
1, null, Daddy
2, 1, Little Jonny
3, 1, Little Sarah
That looks like:
SELECT *
FROM
table c
INNER JOIN
table p
ON c.parentid = p.id
WHERE p.parentid ID NULL
Rows can have only one parent. A NULL in the parent id defines the row as being a parent, otherwise it's a child. You could turn this logic on its head if you wanted, call the column isparentof and have all child rows with null in the isparentof, and anyone who is a parent of a child, out the child id in isparentof. This then limits you to one child per multiple parents (single child families).. the query to pull them out is broadly the same

Answer 2

You can get all the id values for the person = '5' in a Derived Table.
Now, join back to the main table, matching either the absolute of parent (to get the child row(s)) or the id (to get the parent id row itself).
Based on discussion in comments, Try:
SELECT t.*
FROM your_table AS t
JOIN
(
SELECT id AS parent_id
FROM your_table
WHERE person = '5'
) AS dt
ON dt.parent_id = ABS(t.parent) OR
dt.parent_id = t.id
It is hard to comprehend though, why would you put negative values in parent!