Getting the last record inserted into a select query - mysql

Question

I am creating a small message board and I am stuck
I can select the subject, the original author, the number of replies but what I can't do is get the username, topic or date of the last post.
There are 3 tables, boards, topics and messages.
I want to get the author, date and topic of the last message in the message table. The author and date field are already fields on the messages table but i would need to join the messages and topics table on the topicid field.
this is my query that selects the subject, author, and number of replies
SELECT t.topicname, t.author, count( message ) AS message
FROM topics t
INNER JOIN messages m
ON m.topicid = t.topicid
INNER JOIN boards b
ON b.boardid = t.boardid
WHERE b.boardid = 1
GROUP BY t.topicname
Can anyone please help me get this finished?
This is what my tables look like
CREATE TABLE `boards` (
`boardid` int(2) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`boardname` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (`boardid`)
);
CREATE TABLE `messages` (
`messageid` int(6) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`topicid` int(4) NOT NULL default '0',
`message` text NOT NULL,
`author` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`date` timestamp(14) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`messageid`)
);
CREATE TABLE `topics` (
`topicid` int(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`boardid` int(2) NOT NULL default '0',
`topicname` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`author` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (`topicid`)
);

Answer 1

if your SQL supports the LIMIT clause,
SELECT m.author, m.date, t.topicname FROM messages m
JOIN topics t ON m.topicid = t.topicid
ORDER BY date desc LIMIT 1
otherwise:
SELECT m.author, m.date, t.topicname FROM messages m
JOIN topics t ON m.topicid = t.topicid
WHERE m.date = (SELECT max(m2.date) from messages m2)
EDIT: if you want to combine this with the original query, it has to be rewritten using subqueries to extract the message count and the date of last message:
SELECT t.topicname, t.author,
(select count(message) from messages m where m.topicid = t.topicid) AS messagecount,
lm.author, lm.date
FROM topics t
INNER JOIN messages lm
ON lm.topicid = t.topicid AND lm.date = (SELECT max(m2.date) from messages m2)
INNER JOIN boards b
ON b.boardid = t.boardid
WHERE b.boardid = 1
GROUP BY t.topicname
also notice that if you don't pick any field from table boards, you don't need the last join:
SELECT t.topicname, t.author,
(select count(message) from messages m where m.topicid = t.topicid) AS messagecount,
lm.author, lm.date
FROM topics t
INNER JOIN messages lm
ON lm.topicid = t.topicid AND lm.date = (SELECT max(m2.date) from messages m2)
WHERE t.boardid = 1
GROUP BY t.topicname
EDIT: if mysql doesn't support subqueries in the field list, you can try this:
SELECT t.topicname, t.author, mc.messagecount, lm.author, lm.date
FROM topics t
JOIN (select m.topicid, count(*) as messagecount from messages m group by m.topicid) as mc
ON mc.topicid = t.topicid
JOIN messages lm
ON lm.topicid = t.topicid AND lm.date = (SELECT max(m2.date) from messages m2)
WHERE t.boardid = 1
GROUP BY t.topicname

Answer 2

If you want to get the latest entry in a table, you should have a DateTime field that shows when the entry was created (or updated). You can then sort on this column and select the latest one.
But if your id field is a number, you could find the highest. But I would recommend against this because it makes many assumptions and you would be fixed to numerical ids in the future.

Answer 3

You can use a subselect. Eg.:
select * from messages where id = (select max(id) from messages)
edit: And if you identify the newest record by a timestamp, you'd use:
select * from messages where id = (
select id
from messages
order by post_time desc
limit 1)

Answer 4

With MySQL this should work:
SELECT author, date, topicname as topic FROM messages LEFT JOIN topics ON messages.topicid = topics.topicid ORDER BY date DESC, LIMIT 0, 1;