I have a mysql database. How do I select the most recent 10 records? Im not storing timestamps. But the most the recent records are the ones at the bottom rite? Also. How so I get the next ten , the next ten and so on on clicking a button. Kinda like a bunch of forum posts. The recent ones show up first.
If you have an AUTO_INCREMENT
column you can order by that in descending order then limit by 10.
But I suggest you store timestamps and order by that instead so you know you're sorting your records according to date, and not some other value that coincides with date of insertion.
I believe you have an auto increment column as a primary key you can use this column and to order by desc
select * from table order by id desc limit 10
otherwise you have a very poor database design
In addition to what @BoltClock mentioned, prequerying the maximum ID might help the engine with what other records are retrieved... ie: if you have a million records, and most recent 10, I don't know if it will still try to query out the million, order them, and THEN dump it.. I would try something like
select STRAIGHT_JOIN
YT.*
from
( select max( IDColumn ) as MaxOnFile
from YourTable ) PreQuery,
YourTable YT
where
YT.IDColumn >= PreQuery.MaxOnFile -10
order by
YT.IDColumn DESC
limit 10
However, if for some reason, records are allowed to be deleted, you may opt to subtract a little farther back than the -10... but at least this way, the system won't even TRY to process all the other records...