select query - order by help

[twobyfour]

I need to sort a select query.

Table is as follows:


license |
free |
commercial |
free |
gpl |
free |
gpl |
commercial |

I need this to order by all rows with free in the license column first and then gpl and then commercial.

How can i do select statement and use order by license and the entry to sort it like this:

free
free
free
gpl
gpl
commercial
commercial

PHP Code:

SELECT * FROM ------- order by license and input";
$result = @mysql_query($sql,$connection) or die(mysql_error()); 


[Keleth]

Without doing a subselect, I'm not sure you can do it this way. Best as I know, you can only sort by the default order, ascending, or descending.

[twobyfour]

can i do multiple subselects to select the different entries in order to show them properly

[Keleth]

You could do a statement that selects only free and gpl, sorted ascending, then union on the commercial?

[twobyfour]

i tried this but it doesnt work. Can you give me an example?

PHP Code:

SELECT * FROM ------ WHERE license = '(SELECT * FROM ------ WHERE license='Commercial')'"; 


[Keleth]

SELECT * FROM table WHERE license IN ('free', 'gpl') ORDER BY license UNION SELECT * FROM table WHERE license = 'commercial'

[twobyfour]

Thanks for the example but i get this error: Incorrect usage of UNION and ORDER BY

I fixed, the select statements need to be wrapped with ()

[Keleth]

Hm... strange, I've done it without parenthesis, but hey, if it works, great!