Custom sort

[Nutter]

I'd like to do a custom sort on an enum field in MySQL. The field is 'color', 'bw', 'sepia' and I'd like to be able to sort them on that field in that order. Would this be possible?

This is the same order I have them entered in the enum field. Is there a way to sort on the underlying index? My understanding is that the data is actually stored as a numeric value.

[coopster]

You should be fine as is since the default sort order is the index.

ENUM

values are sorted according to the order in which the enumeration members were listed in the column specification. (In other words,

ENUM

values are sorted according to their index numbers.) For example,

'a'

sorts before

'b'

for

ENUM('a', 'b')

, but

'b'

sorts before

'a'

for

ENUM('b', 'a')

. The empty string sorts before non-empty strings, and

NULL

values sort before all other enumeration values. To prevent unexpected results, specify the

ENUM

list in alphabetical order. You can also use

GROUP BY CAST(col AS CHAR)

or

GROUP BY CONCAT(col)

to make sure that the column is sorted lexically rather than by index number.

Resource:
[dev.mysql.com...]

[Nutter]

So I don't sort on that field at all and it'll come out correct? Sounds too easy :-)