Beginners guide to MySQL and MariaDB

The ORDER BY clause on column or columns in MySQL allows the sorting of result set in Ascending and Descending order.

Syntax:

SELECT field1, field2,...fieldN table_name1, table_name2... 
ORDER BY field1, [field2...] [ASC [DESC]]

ORDER BY Example:

Here is an example showing sorting the Books by Author name in Ascending and Descending order

In our PHP script we can use the exact same queries as shown above 

Descending order

<?php
$server = "localhost";
$user = "username";
$pwd = "password";

try {
      $connection = new PDO("mysql:host=$server;dbname=testDB", $user, $pwd);
      $connection->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
      $sql = "select * from book_tbl ORDER BY book_author DESC;";    
      $select = $sql->prepare($sql);
      $select->execute();         
      $result = $select->fetchAll();
      var_dump($result);

    }
    catch(PDOException $e)
    {
    echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
    } 

?>

Ascending order

<?php
$server = "localhost";
$user = "username";
$pwd = "password";

try {
      $connection = new PDO("mysql:host=$server;dbname=testDB", $user, $pwd);
      $connection->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
      // even if you don't specify ASC keyword in the query below, by default the sort or is ASC
      $sql = "select * from book_tbl ORDER BY book_author ASC;";    
      $select = $sql->prepare($sql);
      $select->execute();         
      $result = $select->fetchAll();
      var_dump($result);

    }
    catch(PDOException $e)
    {
    echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
    } 

?>

In our next part of this tutorial series, we will take a look on JOINS