[mysql] SQL order string as number

I have numbers saved as VARCHAR to a MySQL database. I can not make them INT due to some other depending circumstances.

It is taking them as character not as number while sorting.

In database I have

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10...

On my page it shows ordered list like this:

1 10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

How can I make it appear ordered by numbers ascending?

Alter your field to be INT instead of VARCHAR.

I can not make them INT due to some other depending circumstances.

Then fix the depending circumstances first. Otherwise you are working around the real underlying issue. Using a MySQL CAST is an option, but it's masking your bad schema which should be fixed.

If you are using AdonisJS and have mixed IDs such as ABC-202, ABC-201..., you can combine raw queries with Query Builder and implement the solution above (https://stackoverflow.com/a/25061144/4040835) as follows:

const sortField =
  'membership_id'
const sortDirection =
  'asc'
const subquery = UserProfile.query()
  .select(
    'user_profiles.id',
    'user_profiles.user_id',
    'user_profiles.membership_id',
    'user_profiles.first_name',
    'user_profiles.middle_name',
    'user_profiles.last_name',
    'user_profiles.mobile_number',
    'countries.citizenship',
    'states.name as state_of_origin',
    'user_profiles.gender',
    'user_profiles.created_at',
    'user_profiles.updated_at'
  )
  .leftJoin(
    'users',
    'user_profiles.user_id',
    'users.id'
  )
  .leftJoin(
    'countries',
    'user_profiles.nationality',
    'countries.id'
  )
  .leftJoin(
    'states',
    'user_profiles.state_of_origin',
    'states.id'
  )
  .orderByRaw(
    `SUBSTRING(:sortField:,3,15)*1 ${sortDirection}`,
    {
      sortField: sortField,
    }
  )
  .paginate(
    page,
    per_page
  )

NOTES: In this line: SUBSTRING(:sortField:,3,15)*1 ${sortDirection},

1. '3' stands for the index number of the last non-numerical character before the digits. If your mixed ID is "ABC-123," your index number will be 4.
2. '15' is used to catch as any number of digits as possible after the hyphen.
3. '1' performs a mathematical operation on the substring which effectively casts the substring to a number.

Ref 1: You can read more about parameter bindings in raw queries here: https://knexjs.org/#Raw-Bindings Ref 2: Adonis Raw Queries: https://adonisjs.com/docs/4.1/query-builder#_raw_queries

This works for me.

select * from tablename
order by cast(columnname as int) asc

It might help who is looking for the same solution.

select * from tablename ORDER BY ABS(column_name)

I was looking also a sorting fields that has letter prefix. Here is what i found out the solution. This might help who is looking for the same solution.

Field Values:

FL01,FL02,FL03,FL04,FL05,...FL100,...FL123456789

select SUBSTRING(field,3,9) as field from table order by SUBSTRING(field,3,10)*1 desc

SUBSTRING(field,3,9) i put 9 because 9 is way enough for me to hold max 9 digits integer values.

So the result will be 123456789 123456788 123456787 ... 100 99 ... 2 1

Another way to convert.

If you have string field, you can transform it or its numerical part the following way: add leading zeros to make all integer strings having equal length.

ORDER BY CONCAT( REPEAT(  "0", 18 - LENGTH( stringfield ) ) , stringfield ) 

or order by part of a field something like 'tensymbols13', 'tensymbols1222' etc.

ORDER BY CONCAT( REPEAT(  "0", 18 - LENGTH( LEFT( stringfield , 10 ) ) ) , LEFT( stringfield , 10 ) ) 

The column I'm sorting with has any combination of alpha and numeric, so I used the suggestions in this post as a starting point and came up with this.

DECLARE @tmp TABLE (ID VARCHAR(50));
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES ('XYZ300');
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES ('XYZ1002');
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES ('106');
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES ('206');
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES ('1002');
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES ('J206');
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES ('J1002');

SELECT ID, (CASE WHEN ISNUMERIC(ID) = 1 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END) IsNum
FROM @tmp
ORDER BY IsNum, LEN(ID), ID;

Results

ID
------------------------
106
206
1002
J206
J1002
XYZ300
XYZ1002

Hope this helps

Another and simple way

ORDER BY ABS(column_name)

Another way, without using a single cast.

(For people who use JPA 2.0, where no casting is allowed)

select col from yourtable
order by length(col),col

EDIT: only works for positive integers

This will handle negative numbers, fractions, string, everything:

ORDER BY ISNUMERIC(col) DESC, Try_Parse(col AS decimal(10,2)), col;