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How to get the last 15 records from a MySQL table in the right order

Dear Experts,

I have a MySQL table called "messages" which has two fields : name and message.

Now I need an example how to query this table and only fetch the LAST 15 records in (I guess) reverse order.

For example, when I have 1500 records:
The result must be one string containing record 1486, 1487, 1488 and so on: FIELD "name" + "some text" + field "MESSAGE" + " some text".

The idea is that people can enter a name and some short text in two fields on a webpage. Those fields are stored correctly into the table.
Now I need to display only the last 15 messages in chronological order, so last placed message last.

Kind regards,

Maurice

holli

using MS-ACCESS you can have a "LAST n"-statement in your SQL-statement.
that is not possible with mysql.

you will have to use a "counter" field wich value you can use in your statement ( eg. SELECT ... WHERE counter >= 1445 and counter < 1500) or fetch all records in an array and get the last 15 out of these

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

kandura

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rugdog

AFAIK, if no order clause is specified in a MySQL query, the order the rows are retrieved is the order they were inserted, so if you need to fetch the last 15, try this:

1. compute the total number of rows
select count(*) from mesages;
2. substract 15 to the count minus one (since first row is 0) and use that number in limit, so, for example, if the count is 100 try:

select * from messages limit 84,15

gruntar

Kandura gave you the right answer :) Listen to him

Cheers