MySQL JOIN with LIMIT 1 on joined table

Solution 1:

I like more another approach described in a similar question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11885521/2215679

This approach is better especially in case if you need to show more than one field in SELECT. To avoid Error Code: 1241. Operand should contain 1 column(s) or double sub-select for each column.

For your situation the Query should looks like:

SELECT
 c.id,
 c.title,
 p.id AS product_id,
 p.title AS product_title
FROM categories AS c
JOIN products AS p ON
 p.id = (                                 --- the PRIMARY KEY
  SELECT p1.id FROM products AS p1
  WHERE c.id=p1.category_id
  ORDER BY p1.id LIMIT 1
 )

Solution 2:

Accepted answer by @goggin13 looks wrong. Other solutions provided to-date will work, but suffer from the n+1 problem and as such, suffer a performance hit.

n+1 problem: If there are 100 categories, then we would have to do 1 select to get the categories, then for each of the 100 categories returned, we would need to do a select to get the products in that category. So 101 SELECT queries would be performed.

My alternative solution solves the n+1 problem and consequently should be significantly more performant as only 2 selects are being performed.

SELECT
  *
FROM
    (SELECT c.id, c.title, p.id AS product_id, p.title
    FROM categories AS c
    JOIN products AS p ON c.id = p.category_id
    ORDER BY c.id ASC) AS a 
GROUP BY id;

Solution 3:

SELECT c.id, c.title, p.id AS product_id, p.title
FROM categories AS c
JOIN products AS p ON c.id = p.category_id
GROUP BY c.id

This will return the first data in products (equals limit 1)

Solution 4:

What about this?

SELECT c.id, c.title, (SELECT id from products AS p 
                            WHERE c.id = p.category_id 
                            ORDER BY ... 
                            LIMIT 1)
   FROM categories AS c;