MySQL Query Sorting High Scores - mysql

Question

I'm trying to select the top 3 entries from a table called games that has foreign keys to the players and 2 ints for individual scores for the host and opponent.
The Query:
SELECT
games.id, games.host_score, games.opponent_score, player.name
FROM games, player
WHERE player.id = games.host_player_id
|| player.id = games.opponent_player_id
ORDER BY games.host_score, games.opponent_score DESC LIMIT 3
The query completes but it comes back out of order:
id host_score opponent_score name
17 0 0 Temp2
17 0 0 Temp0
16 770 930 Temp0
When I run a query that doesn't have an OR it works. How can I get this method working?
Also is there a way to set a LIMIT of 50 but not count duplicates?
For example if i wanted a limit of 2 but 3 people have the score 50 and 2 people have the score 20 it would return :
id host_score opponent_score name
17 50 0 Temp2
17 50 0 Temp0
17 50 0 Temp1
17 20 0 Temp3
17 20 0 Temp4
Or would it be better to run it as seperate quesies in php?

Answer 1

If you want to order from highest to lowest, you need to specify it for each field
ORDER BY games.host_score DESC, games.opponent_score DESC
Because when you don't specify the order it assumes you want the ascending order

Answer 2

I think your query is wrong, because one game will be on two rows -- one for the host and one for the opponent.
You want to get both the host and opponent names, so you need to join twice to the player table:
SELECT g.id, g.host_score, g.opponent_score, hp.name as HostName, op.name as OpponentName
FROM games g join
player hp
on hp.id = g.host_player_id join
player op
on op.id = g.opponent_player_id
ORDER BY g.host_score, g.opponent_score DESC
LIMIT 3

Answer 3

You should use OR (instead of ||) in SQL, also add parenthesis to make it readable.
WHERE (player.id = games.host_player_id) OR (player.id = games.opponent_player_id)
To get top 50 scores by the score values, though the total row count returned may be higher.
Use the barebones query below and tweak it to your needs.
SELECT g1.id, g1.host_scores, COUNT(g2.host_scores) AS Rank
FROM games g1
WHERE Rank <= 50
JOIN games g2 ON (g1.host_scores < g2.host_scores) OR (g1.host_scores=g2.host_scores)
GROUP BY g1.id, g1.host_scores
ORDER BY g1.host_scores DESC;
I must add that for such things to avoid complexity you can also get the data to your
application and easily do this in a programming language like Java, PHP etc.
It may result in you making more than one query but is far more simpler and more
maintainable over time.