Ordering by the order of values in a SQL IN() clause

I am wondering if there is away (possibly a better way) to order by the order of the values in an IN() clause.

The problem is that I have 2 queries, one that gets all of the IDs and the second that retrieves all the information. The first creates the order of the IDs which I want the second to order by. The IDs are put in an IN() clause in the correct order.

So it'd be something like (extremely simplified):

SELECT id FROM table1 WHERE ... ORDER BY display_order, name

SELECT name, description, ... WHERE id IN ([id's from first])

The issue is that the second query does not return the results in the same order that the IDs are put into the IN() clause.

One solution I have found is to put all of the IDs into a temp table with an auto incrementing field which is then joined into the second query.

Is there a better option?

Note: As the first query is run "by the user" and the second is run in a background process, there is no way to combine the 2 into 1 query using sub queries.

I am using MySQL, but I'm thinking it might be useful to have it noted what options there are for other DBs as well.

Use MySQL's FIELD() function:

SELECT name, description, ...
FROM ...
WHERE id IN([ids, any order])
ORDER BY FIELD(id, [ids in order])

FIELD() will return the index of the first parameter that is equal to the first parameter (other than the first parameter itself).

FIELD('a', 'a', 'b', 'c')

will return 1

FIELD('a', 'c', 'b', 'a')

will return 3

This will do exactly what you want if you paste the ids into the IN() clause and the FIELD() function in the same order.

See following how to get sorted data.

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE zip IN (91709,92886,92807,...,91356)
   AND user.status=1
ORDER 
    BY provider.package_id DESC 
     , FIELD(zip,91709,92886,92807,...,91356)
LIMIT 10

Two solutions that spring to mind:

1. order by case id when 123 then 1 when 456 then 2 else null end asc

2. order by instr(','||id||',',',123,456,') asc

(instr() is from Oracle; maybe you have locate() or charindex() or something like that)