MySQL query by string and limit - mysql

Question

I have a table "articles" that has a column "company" which has list of companies or an article type - crappy I know, but it's not my DB. :) Let's say there are n articles for each type. I need to select the first article (based on year, or any other criteria) that is of the type. Something like this:
select * from details where (company = 'aaa' or company = 'bbb' or ...)
I know what the types are, so they can be hardcoded. I need to limit only the first article for each type. Thanks!
EDIT
given the sample data:
id company copy issue
------------------------
1 apple 'abc' NULL
2 bmw 'abc' NULL
3 ibm 'abc' NULL
4 news 'abc' 2
5 news 'abc' 3
6 seagate 'abc' NULL
7 events 'abc' 1
8 features 'abc' 5
9 samsung 'abc' NULL
I need rows 4, 7, 8.
EDIT2
Sorry if I wasn't clear. Essentially the table contains two different types of data. One is company info, and one is article info. Basically I need to do this:
select * from articles where company = "news" order by issue limit 1;
select * from articles where company = "events" order by issue limit 1;
select * from articles where company = "features" order by issue limit 1;
but with a single query.

Answer 1

Something like this perhaps
select * from details d
where company in ('news', 'events', 'features')
and not exists (
select 1 from details d_
where d_.company = d.company
and d_.id < d.id -- provide your sortable criteria here
)
Example here - http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/bb8f2/6

Answer 2

This query:
select t1.* from t t1
left join t t2
on t1.company = t2.company and t1.id > t2.id
where t2.id is null and t1.company in ('news', 'events', 'features')
will return:
+----+----------+------+
| ID | COMPANY | COPY |
+----+----------+------+
| 4 | news | abc |
| 7 | events | abc |
| 8 | features | abc |
+----+----------+------+
Is that what you're looking for?
Note: When you say the first article I assume the order is provided by the ID field
You can play with it here
Edit:
After your edit, the query is almost the same, just change the ordering field to issue instead of id:
select t1.* from t t1
left join t t2
on t1.company = t2.company and t1.issue > t2.issue
where t2.id is null and t1.company in ('news', 'events', 'features')

Answer 3

Assuming "company" and "publication_date" are columns in table "details", then something like:
select *
from details
where company in ('aaa', 'bbb', ...)
and publication_date between '2012-02-01' and '2012-03-01'
order by publication_date desc
limit 1

Answer 4

You are trying to do a group by.
Next you want to order by the issue column.
Then you only need the first row.
I used group concat to create a list,
then extract the first string in the ordered list group_concat(copy order by copy).
select
id,
company,
substring(
group_concat(copy order by copy),
1,
case when substring_index(group_concat(copy order by copy),',',1) > 1
then substring_index(group_concat(copy order by copy),',',1)-1
else 1 end
) as copy
from details d
where company in ('news', 'events', 'features')
group by company
*the list group_concat(copy order by copy) cannot be too long though, which depends on your data.