MySQL accessing two tables in single query - mysql

Question

Here's a simplified version of my troubles. 3 tables, the first (transit) will be used in upcoming procedures and functions, the second (products) will hold stationary data about products, the third (userWatchList) will hold user-specific data related to products.
TABLE: transit
+---------+------+
| ranking | data |
+---------+------+
| | |
+---------+------+
TABLE: products
+----+------+-----------------+
| ID | data | importantnumber |
+----+------+-----------------+
| 1 | c | 10 |
| 2 | u | 20 |
| 3 | t | 20 |
| 4 | u | 40 |
+----+------+-----------------+
TABLE: userWatchList
+---------+----+
| ranking | ID |
+---------+----+
| 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 3 |
+---------+----+
I need to insert into "transit" the data and ranking of rows that are within the needed ranking range and the data of which meets certain requirements.
I now want the ranking and data of a product, that has an importantnumber value of 20.
Say the allowed ranking range was between 1 and 2, SELECT * FROM transit at the end of the desired process would output:
+---------+------+
| ranking | data |
+---------+------+
| 1 | 'u' |
+---------+------+
Say the allowed ranking range was between 1 and 3, SELECT * FROM transit at the end of the desired process would output:
+---------+------+
| ranking | data |
+---------+------+
| 1 | 'u' |
| 4 | 't' |
+---------+------+
My vision of a possible solution...
To make sure the ranking falls within the needed range, I thought I might use dynamic SQL:
SET #IDsRetrieveStmt = CONCAT("SELECT group_concat(ID SEPARATOR ',') INTO #IDsStr FROM userWatchList WHERE ranking BETWEEN ', #rankingmin,' AND ', #rankingmax,';');
PREPARE stmt FROM #IDsRetrieveStmt;
EXECUTE stmt;
Now. To add ranking value to those fields... what should i do? I imagine one option is somewhere along the lines of:
SET #fetch_data_stmt = CONCAT('INSERT INTO transit (data, ranking) SELECT data, ( **** ) FROM products WHERE ID IN ( ', #IDsStr, ') AND importantnumber=20;');
PREPARE stmt FROM #fetch_data_stmt;
EXECUTE stmt;
** some unknown magic here that fetches ranking from a row with the same ID from 'products' table. This could be SELECT ranking FROM userWatchList WHERE ID=ID, but as you see, the ID part will probably create a conflict. Also, it seems a bit ineffective to run a new SELECT query with every inserted row.
I am sure there is a more effective way of doing this that I haven't heard of yet.
What's the best way of achieving this? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The first, and most important, part of the answer is the query that generates the data you want. You need to join the two tables together and use your criteria as conditions in the query:
select ranking, data
from userWatchList u
join product p on p.ID = u.ID
where ranking between ? and ?
and importantnumber = ?
Of course substituting ? with your criteria.
The next part of the answer is more advice. Unless there's an extremely compelling reason to do so, don't create a table to hold the data output from this query, because it's derived data that is out of date the instant it's created, unless you put in complicated database infrastructure (triggers) to keep it fresh.
Instead, create a view, that's like a table to a client (an application), but is actually a query under the hood:
create view transit as
select ranking, data, importantnumber
from userWatchList u
join product p on p.ID = u.ID
Then to use:
select ranking, data
from transit
where ranking between ? and ?
and importantnumber = ?