MySQL JOIN tables with WHERE clause - mysql

Question

I need to gather posts from two mysql tables that have different columns and provide a WHERE clause to each set of tables. I appreciate the help, thanks in advance.
This is what I have tried...
SELECT
blabbing.id,
blabbing.mem_id,
blabbing.the_blab,
blabbing.blab_date,
blabbing.blab_type,
blabbing.device,
blabbing.fromid,
team_blabbing.team_id
FROM
blabbing
LEFT OUTER JOIN
team_blabbing
ON team_blabbing.id = blabbing.id
WHERE
team_id IN ($team_array) ||
mem_id='$id' ||
fromid='$logOptions_id'
ORDER BY
blab_date DESC
LIMIT 20
I know that this is messy, but i'll admit, I am no mysql veteran. I'm a beginner at best... Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You could put the where-clauses in subqueries:
select
*
from
(select * from ... where ...) as alias1 -- this is a subquery
left outer join
(select * from ... where ...) as alias2 -- this is also a subquery
on
....
order by
....
Note that you can't use subqueries like this in a view definition.
You could also combine the where-clauses, as in your example. Use table aliases to distinguish between columns of different tables (it's a good idea to use aliases even when you don't have to, just because it makes things easier to read). Example:
select
*
from
<table> as alias1
left outer join
<othertable> as alias2
on
....
where
alias1.id = ... and alias2.id = ... -- aliases distinguish between ids!!
order by
....

Answer 2

Two suggestions for you since a relative newbie in SQL. Use "aliases" for your tables to help reduce SuperLongTableNameReferencesForColumns, and always qualify the column names in a query. It can help your life go easier, and anyone AFTER you to better know which columns come from what table, especially if same column name in different tables. Prevents ambiguity in the query. Your left join, I think, from the sample, may be ambigous, but confirm the join of B.ID to TB.ID? Typically a "Team_ID" would appear once in a teams table, and each blabbing entry could have the "Team_ID" that such posting was from, in addition to its OWN "ID" for the blabbing table's unique key indicator.
SELECT
B.id,
B.mem_id,
B.the_blab,
B.blab_date,
B.blab_type,
B.device,
B.fromid,
TB.team_id
FROM
blabbing B
LEFT JOIN team_blabbing TB
ON B.ID = TB.ID
WHERE
TB.Team_ID IN ( you can't do a direct $team_array here )
OR B.mem_id = SomeParameter
OR b.FromID = AnotherParameter
ORDER BY
B.blab_date DESC
LIMIT 20
Where you were trying the $team_array, you would have to build out the full list as expected, such as
TB.Team_ID IN ( 1, 4, 18, 23, 58 )
Also, not logical "||" or, but SQL "OR"
EDIT -- per your comment
This could be done in a variety of ways, such as dynamic SQL building and executing, calling multiple times, once for each ID and merging the results, or additionally, by doing a join to yet another temp table that gets cleaned out say... daily.
If you have another table such as "TeamJoins", and it has say... 3 columns: a date, a sessionid and team_id, you could daily purge anything from a day old of queries, and/or keep clearing each time a new query by the same session ID (as it appears coming from PHP). Have two indexes, one on the date (to simplify any daily purging), and second on (sessionID, team_id) for the join.
Then, loop through to do inserts into the "TempJoins" table with the simple elements identified.
THEN, instead of a hard-coded list IN, you could change that part to
...
FROM
blabbing B
LEFT JOIN team_blabbing TB
ON B.ID = TB.ID
LEFT JOIN TeamJoins TJ
on TB.Team_ID = TJ.Team_ID
WHERE
TB.Team_ID IN NOT NULL
OR B.mem_id ... rest of query

Answer 3

What I ended up doing is;
I added an extra column to my blabbing table called team_id and set it to null as well as another field in my team_blabbing table called mem_id
Then I changed the insert script to also insert a value to the mem_id in team_blabbing.
After doing this I did a simple UNION ALL in the query:
SELECT
*
FROM
blabbing
WHERE
mem_id='$id' OR
fromid='$logOptions_id'
UNION ALL
SELECT
*
FROM
team_blabbing
WHERE
team_id
IN
($team_array)
ORDER BY
blab_date DESC
LIMIT 20
I am open to any thought on what I did. Try not to be too harsh though:) Thanks again for all the info.