MySQL: keep column together in results?

OK when I make a request I want all the items with the same group_id to be "together" for example 117,117,134,111 is fine but 117,134,117,111 is not fine because the group_id 117 are not all "together". I hope that makes sense. The only way I know how to do achieve this is by ordering my results by group_id, but if I want to order by like price or something is there a way to do that while keeping all the matching group_id's together?

Thanks.

From stackoverflow

• Yes, you just order by both, so your ORDER BY should look like this:

  ORDER BY group_id, price
  

  That will first order by group_id, then by price. So all the same group_ids will be together, but whenever there are multiple with the same group_id, they will be ordered by price.

  Your question is a little ambiguous though, so just to explain in case it's what you actually wanted - there's no easy way to "mainly" order by price and just keep identical group_ids together, that doesn't really make any sense. What I mean is, if you had the following data:

  group_id  price
  117       2.00
  117       5.00
  111       4.00
  134       1.00
  

  You can't easily select it in this order:

  group_id  price
  134       1.00
  117       2.00
  117       5.00
  111       4.00
  

  John Isaacks : Hi Chad, thanks for clearing that up, the example you showed is EXACTLY what I was trying to do. But I guess I can't do that. Thanks!

• Then you'd have to order by multiple columns, so:

  SELECT group_id, price, name
  FROM groups
  ORDER BY group_id, price;
  

  In this way, all the groupid's are together, and within those 'groups' of groupids, everything is sorted by it's price. Or have I misunderstood your question?

• Why don't you order by price AND group_id???

  SELECT price, group_id, ...
  FROM products
  WHERE 1=1
  ORDER BY price DESC, group_id
  

  This will show the biggest prices first, and for prices equal, it will show the group_id consecutive

• I would do:

  SELECT price, group_id
  FROM groups
  WHERE 1=1
  ORDER BY group_id, price DESC
  

  For showing groups consecutive, and then the prices in descendant order.