mySQL SELECT FROM table WHERE ... AND ... AND ... AND - mysql

Question

I have a table "articles" with columns and data:
article_id title body
1 This is the title This is the body text
2 Another title Another body text
Another table "category" with columns and data:
category_id category
1 localnews
2 visible
3 first10
And a table "categories" with columns and data:
categories_id article_id category_id
1 1 1
2 1 2
3 1 3
4 2 1
5 2 3
I want to SELECT the row(s) WHERE categories.category_id = 1 AND =2 AND =3
I'm using:
SELECT articles.article_id, articles.title, articles.body,
categories.article_id, categories.category_id
FROM articles, categories
WHERE articles.article_id = categories.article_id
AND categories.article_id = 1
AND categories.article_id = 2
AND categories.article_id = 3
but it doesn't work. Obviously mySQL needs another syntax.
Can someone help?
Thanks

Answer 1

SELECT
Articles.article_id,
COUNT( Categories.article_id ) AS total
FROM CategoryArticles
LEFT JOIN Articles USING (article_id)
WHERE
CategoryArticles.category_id IN (1,2,3)
GROUP BY CategoryArticles.article_id
HAVING total = 3
I used a bit different names for table because in your example the distinction between category and categories is hard to notice.

Answer 2

An column of a row cannot be 1, 2 or 3 at the same time, which is what AND stipulates. Use OR in your WHERE condition. Better yet - for readability - you can use IN:
SELECT ...
WHERE `categories`.`article_id` IN(1,2,3)

Answer 3

In addition to the commonly used IN() and using a HAVING count, I would be interested in the performance difference by doing a multiple-join as follows...
SELECT STRAIGHT_JOIN
articles.article_id,
articles.title,
articles.body
FROM
categories c1
JOIN articles
on c1.article_id = articles.article_id
JOIN categories c2
on c1.article_id = c2.article_id
AND c2.category_id = 2
JOIN categories c3
on c1.article_id = c3.article_id
AND c3.category_id = 3
WHERE
c1.Category_ID = 1
Yes, this may look obscure, but lets think about it... by doing a join FIRST on the categories table where ONE of your specific categories -- THIS FIRST FROM instance of categories should be representative of whichever category would have the smallest granularity. Ex: Your categories of Local News, Visible and First 10. Local news would probably have the most entries, while Visible and First 10 would have even less... of those, which would have even the smallest number of records. Use THIS category as the where clause.
So, say you have 100,000 articles, and 90,000 are in local news, 45,000 in Visible, and 12,000 in First 10. By starting your query on only those in the 12,000, you are eliminating most of the data.
By then joining to the articles table, and categories AGAIN as alias C2 and C3 respectively based on the other conditions, if found, done, if not, its excluded.
Again, I'm wondering the performance impact. I would also have a compound index on the categories table on both (article_id, category_id)

Answer 4

The value cannot be all three values simultaneously, so you'd better use an IN clause in your WHERE to define which you want to return. Give you've already got a join condition there, you'd want to move that to an ON clause instead as well; ie:
SELECT articles.article_id, articles.title, articles.body, categories.article_id, categories.category_id
FROM articles
INNER JOIN categories ON articles.article_id = categories.article_id
WHERE categories.article_id IN ( 1, 2, 3 )
Of course, you can go to the next step and do:
SELECT articles.article_id, articles.title, articles.body, category.category
FROM articles
INNER JOIN categories ON articles.article_id = categories.article_id
INNER JOIN category ON categories.category_id = category.category_id
WHERE categories.article_id IN ( 1, 2, 3 )
If instead you wanted to show only articles that appear in all three categories, then you could take an approach like:
SELECT articles.article_id, articles.title, articles.body
FROM articles
INNER JOIN categories AS c1
ON articles.article_id = c1.article_id
AND c1.category_id = 1
INNER JOIN categories AS c2
ON articles.article_id = c2.article_id
AND c2.category_id = 2
INNER JOIN categories AS c3
ON articles.article_id = c3.article_id
AND c3.category_id = 3