Today I ran into a problem. I need to sort results of a given query by fixed column values.

Example

I have a column named status and which holds the following values 1,2,3,4

When I user normal sort method like

Order By status ASC will return 1,2,3,4

Order By status DESC will return 4,3,2,1

Suppose If I need the result to be sorted in a particular Order 3,2,4,1 then I ran into problem. Both method cannot solve my problem.

Then Googled and I found a thread in MySQL forum where Papalagi Pakeha had the same problem.

http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/209777

For that Johan Höök replied with a solution

http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/209784

Where I can user Order By Field function to get the needed result. So my query will look something like

Order By Field(status,3,2,4,1) which does the magic. I searched the whole MySQL documentation but I am unable to find the proper documentation. Who cares it works for me ;-)