MySQL - ORDER BY clause

In this article, we would like to show you how to use ORDER BY clause in MySQL.

Quick solution:

SELECT `column1`, `column2`, ...
FROM `table_name`
ORDER BY `column1`, `column2`, ... ASC|DESC;

Practical example

To show how the ORDER BY clause works, we will use the following table:

Note:

At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.

Example 1

In this example, we will sort users data by name.

Note:

By default ORDER BY clause sorts the data in ascending order.

Query:

SELECT * FROM `users` ORDER BY `name`;

Output:

Example 2

In this example, we will sort users data by name in descending order.

Query:

SELECT * FROM `users` ORDER BY `name` DESC;

Output:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE `users` (
	`id` INT(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
	`name` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
	`role` VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
	PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
)
ENGINE=InnoDB;

 insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO `users`
	(`name`, `role`)
VALUES
	('John', 'admin'),
	('Chris', 'moderator'),
	('Kate', 'user'),
	('Denis', 'moderator');