Mysql fetching data from multiple tables - mysql

Question

I am having three tables
user(id,fname,lname)
picture(picid,pic_path,userid)
friends(friend_of,friends_id,status)
I want to fetch id,fname,lname,pic_path for all friends_id of friends_of=1
picture path may be null
Thankx in advance.

Answer 1

What you're looking for is called a join. In particular, you're looking for a JOIN and a LEFT JOIN.
SELECT
user.id, user.fname, user.lname, picture.pic_path
FROM
friends
JOIN user
ON user.id = friends_id
LEFT JOIN picture
ON userid = user.id
WHERE
friends.friend_of = 1
This will only work though if there's a maximum of 1 entry in picture.
Though this answers your immediate question, I suggest you become very familiar with joins. They're one of the fundamental operations of a relational database. (Note that a join essentially is a mathematical relation)

Answer 2

Try this
SELECT u.*,p.*,f.*
FROM USER u
LEFT JOIN picture p ON p.user_id = id
INNER JOIN friends f ON f.friends_of = u.id
WHERE f.friends_id = 1

Answer 3

For querys like that you need to understand and employ the relations between your entities. Then you work in two steps: selection and projection and contrary to what SQL-syntax may imply the part before the FROM keyword is the projection.
First we compile data. Clearly we need the data from all three tables and we need it once. So at first we construct all possible combinations, by joining all three tables. In SQL this is done in the FROM part, i.e.
FROM friends f, picture p, user u
f, p and u are aliases which serve the purpose of saving us the efford of typing the full table names in the following.
Now we have all possible combinations. Let's select the ones we want:
I suppose every picture in your DB belongs to a user which is stored in your DB as well. So my assumption is that you only want pictures associated to a user. Hence we have a first restrictions on all the combinations we made before! The restriction derived from the (probable) meaning of the data stored in you database and stated as:
u.id = p.userid
(Notice: by applying this restriction to combination above we "select" only certain combinations.)
Then you already stated another restrictions as a request "friends_of=1" to associate this constraint on the combination we write:
f.friends_of=1
Then we combine your request "friends_of=1" with the other data by:
f.friend_of = u.id
This constraint selects only those users who are a friend of somebody. Now we can combine these constraints. As we want all constraints to be satisfied we AND them in a WHERE statement:
WHERE u.id = p.userid AND f.friend_of = u.id AND f.friends_of=1
The ordering does not affect meaning (in this case. But let's rethink those constraints:
u.id = p.userid : we want information about the user and the pictures associated with that user
f.friend_of = u.id : we are looking for a users who are friends of somebody
f.friends_of=1 : we are looking for friends of a particular somebody
Now we project the data stored in our DB to what we want. We want all the user data and picture paths. In SQL:
SELECT u.*,p.pic_path
Now we put everything together.
SELECT u.*,p.pic_path FROM friends f, picture p, user u WHERE u.id = p.userid AND f.friend_of = u.id AND f.friends_of=1
To allow for friends that don't have a picture associated with them (note: that's very different to pic_path being NULL) you need an outer join, which means you also want combinations with empty sets. That's where my MySQL is not so good but I'd guess you'd generate all combinations you want (and many more) with:
FROM friends f JOIN user u LEFT JOIN picture p ON u.id = p.userid
and
SELECT u.*,p.pic_path FROM friends f JOIN user u LEFT JOIN picture p WHERE f.friend_of = u.id AND f.friends_of=1
Notice, that the constraint that may be violated has been made explicit by moving it from the general selection to the generation of the data combinations as a rule on how to create combinations. And yes, it's a shortcut instead of following through the idea of selection and projection.