Order a MySQL table by two columns

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How do I sort a MySQL table by two columns?

What I want are articles sorted by highest ratings first, then most recent date. As an example, this would be a sample output (left # is the rating, then the article title, then the article date)

+================+=============================+==============+
| article_rating | article                     | article_time |
+================+=============================+==============+
| 50             | This article rocks          | Feb 4, 2009  |
+----------------+-----------------------------+--------------+
| 35             | This article is pretty good | Feb 1, 2009  |
+----------------+-----------------------------+--------------+
| 5              | This Article isn't so hot   | Jan 25, 2009 |
+================+=============================+==============+

The relevant SQL I'm using is:

ORDER BY article_rating, article_time DESC

I can sort by one or the other, but not both.

sql-order-by mysql
4 Answers

Default sorting is ascending, you need to add the keyword DESC to both your orders:

ORDER BY article_rating DESC, article_time DESC
user_399910 
ORDER BY article_rating, article_time DESC

will sort by article_time only if there are two articles with the same rating. From all I can see in your example, this is exactly what happens.

↓ primary sort                         secondary sort ↓
1.  50 | This article rocks          | Feb 4, 2009    3.
2.  35 | This article is pretty good | Feb 1, 2009    2.
3.  5  | This Article isn't so hot   | Jan 25, 2009   1.

but consider:

↓ primary sort                         secondary sort ↓
1.  50 | This article rocks          | Feb 2, 2009    3.
1.  50 | This article rocks, too     | Feb 4, 2009    4.
2.  35 | This article is pretty good | Feb 1, 2009    2.
3.  5  | This Article isn't so hot   | Jan 25, 2009   1.
Tomalak_187710 
ORDER BY article_rating ASC , article_time DESC

DESC at the end will sort by both columns descending. You have to specify ASC if you want it otherwise

Learning_182750
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