Mysql – Joining INTO many-to-many table (From Primary Key Table)

MySQL

This is how far i have gotten, though i don't think it can be done with 1 SQL-statement, i just want to confirm whether or not it is possible to do this with ONLY 1 statement:

SELECT * FROM users
INNER JOIN users_mentors ON users_mentors.id=users.mentoruser_id
INNER JOIN mentor_types ON (mentor_types.id=users_mentors.mentor_type OR users_mentors.mentor_type IS NULL)
INNER JOIN mentor_geographies ON mentor_geographies.mentor_id=users_mentors.id
INNER JOIN communes ON communes.id=mentor_geographies.commune_id
LIMIT 0,10

users table with foreignkey to users_mentors:

+------+---------+---------------+
| id   | user_id | mentoruser_id |
+------+---------+---------------+
| 1886 |    NULL |             4 |
| 1885 |    NULL |          NULL |
| 1884 |    NULL |          NULL |
| 1883 |    NULL |          NULL |
| 1882 |    NULL |          NULL |
+------+---------+---------------+

users_mentors table (in a many-to-many relationship with communes):

+----+-------------+
| id | mentor_type |
+----+-------------+
|  4 |        NULL |
|  1 |           1 |
|  2 |           2 |
|  3 |           3 |
+----+-------------+

communes table (in a many-to-many relationship with users_mentors):

+----+--------------+-------+----------+
| id | name         | short | contract |
+----+--------------+-------+----------+
|  1 | KÃ¸benhavn   | NULL  |        0 |
|  2 | Aarhus       | NULL  |        0 |
|  3 | Aalborg      | NULL  |        0 |
|  4 | Odense       | NULL  |        0 |
|  5 | Esbjerg      | NULL  |        0 |
+----+--------------+-------+----------+

mentor_geographies table (the m2m table that has FK to communes & users_mentors):

+----+-----------+------------+
| id | mentor_id | commune_id |
+----+-----------+------------+
|  1 |         4 |          1 |
|  2 |         4 |          2 |
+----+-----------+------------+

So my question is:

Is it possible to get all rows from users_mentors and a list of all their commune.type's, IF THEY EXIST (if mentor_geographies is empty, i want empty list of commune.type). In all cases i want the user.

Best Answer

http://sqlfiddle.com/#!9/33b19d/3 ...

as I said in the comments - use left join instead of inner join ...

your diagram misses the mentor_types ... so I commented it out.

of course you will get 2 lines for user 1886

For your question regarding all lines of user_mentors - no its impossible if you start building the select with the users table. And as there is no mentoruser_id that points to other lines than the id==4 line in users_mentors.

Related Solutions

MySQL – Joining Three Tables Using IDs as Foreign Keys

You are on the right track. Don't let perceived complexity derail the design, as it is basically the standard way to represent many-to-many relationships. These tables are also a good place to store metadata or attributes of the entity relationship.

Your reasoning is mostly correct: there are data integrity benefits to using a DBMS-generated key in the intermediate table approach, but an integer isn't necessarily faster on key comparisons because ideally the joins would use indexes, not the column values.

MySQL – How to Simulate a Table Join on Itself

You'll need to first create a list of every product_number and date combination. You can do this using a CROSS JOIN of your table:

select distinct p.product_number, d.date
from yourtable p
cross join yourtable d;

See SQL Fiddle with Demo. This will create a list of data similar to:

| PRODUCT_NUMBER |                            DATE |
|----------------|---------------------------------|
|            100 |  January, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |
|            200 |  January, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |
|            100 | February, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |

You will then use the above query and LEFT JOIN to your table to return the final result:

select 
  pd.product_number,
  pd.date,
  t.value
from
(
  -- list of every product/date
  select distinct p.product_number, d.date
  from yourtable p
  cross join yourtable d
) pd
left join yourtable t
  on pd.date = t.date
  and pd.product_number = t.product_number
order by pd.product_number, pd.date;

See SQL Fiddle with Demo. Giving a final result of:

| PRODUCT_NUMBER |                            DATE |  VALUE |
|----------------|---------------------------------|--------|
|            100 |  January, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            100 | February, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            100 |    March, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            200 |  January, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            200 | February, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 | (null) |
|            200 |    March, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |

The LEFT JOIN returns all rows from your list of products and dates regardless of whether a matching row exists in the other table.

This could also be written as:

select 
  p.product_number,
  d.date,
  t.value
from
(
  -- list of every product
  select distinct product_number
  from yourtable 
) p  
cross join
( 
  -- list of every date
  select distinct date
  from yourtable 
) d
  -- then join to the table
left join yourtable t
  on  d.date = t.date
  and p.product_number = t.product_number
order by p.product_number, d.date ;

See SQL Fiddle with Demo. This may have better performance depending on your table size.

Now if you wanted to return a list of all dates, regardless of whether or not they appear in the table, then I would suggest creating a table of dates. This table would be used in a similar manner to create a list of all dates/products which you would then join.

The table would be similar to:

CREATE TABLE dates
    (`date` datetime)
;

INSERT INTO dates
    (`date`)
VALUES
    ('2010-01-01 00:00:00'),
    ('2010-02-01 00:00:00'),
    ('2010-03-01 00:00:00'),
    ('2010-04-01 00:00:00'),
    ('2010-05-01 00:00:00')
;

You'd then use the following query to get the list of dates/products:

select distinct p.product_number, d.date
from yourtable p
cross join dates d

And finally, you would join that back to your table:

select 
  pd.product_number,
  pd.date,
  t.value
from
(
  -- list of every product/date
  select distinct p.product_number, d.date
  from yourtable p
  cross join dates d
) pd
left join yourtable t
  on pd.date = t.date
  and pd.product_number = t.product_number
order by pd.product_number, pd.date;

See SQL Fiddle with Demo. Or an alternative:

select 
  p.product_number,
  d.date,
  t.value
from
(
  -- list of every product
  select distinct product_number
  from yourtable 
) p  
cross join
 dates
  d
  -- then join to the table
left join yourtable t
  on  d.date = t.date
  and p.product_number = t.product_number
order by p.product_number, d.date ;

See SQL Fiddle with Demo. Again this may have better performance based on the table size. Using this type of solution, you'd return all dates even those not in your table:

| PRODUCT_NUMBER |                            DATE |  VALUE |
|----------------|---------------------------------|--------|
|            100 |  January, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            100 | February, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            100 |    March, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            100 |    April, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 | (null) |
|            100 |      May, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 | (null) |
|            200 |  January, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            200 | February, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 | (null) |
|            200 |    March, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 |      1 |
|            200 |    April, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 | (null) |
|            200 |      May, 01 2010 00:00:00+0000 | (null) |

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MySQL – Joining Three Tables Using IDs as Foreign Keys

MySQL – How to Simulate a Table Join on Itself

Related Question