PHP MySQL Use The ORDER BY Clause

Select and Order Data From a MySQL Database

The ORDER BY clause is used to sort the result-set in ascending or descending order.
The ORDER BY clause sorts the records in ascending order by default. To sort the records in descending order, use the DESC keyword.

SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name(s) ASC|DESC 

To learn more about SQL, please visit our SQL tutorial.

Select and Order Data With MySQLi

The following example selects the id, firstname and lastname columns from the MyGuests table. The records will be ordered by the lastname column:

< ?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
  die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

$sql = "SELECT id, firstname, lastname FROM MyGuests ORDER BY lastname";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
  // output data of each row
  while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    echo "id: " . $row["id"]. " - Name: " . $row["firstname"]. " " . $row["lastname"]. "< br>";
  }
} else {
  echo "0 results";
}
$conn->close();
?>

Code lines to explain from the example above:
First, we set up the SQL query that selects the id, firstname and lastname columns from the MyGuests table. The records will be ordered by the lastname column. The next line of code runs the query and puts the resulting data into a variable called $result.
Then, the function num_rows() checks if there are more than zero rows returned.
If there are more than zero rows returned, the function fetch_assoc() puts all the results into an associative array that we can loop through. The while() loop loops through the result set and outputs the data from the id, firstname and lastname columns.
The following example shows the same as the example above, in the MySQLi procedural way:
Example (MySQLi Procedural)

< ?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

// Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if (!$conn) {
  die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}

$sql = "SELECT id, firstname, lastname FROM MyGuests ORDER BY lastname";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if (mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0) {
  // output data of each row
  while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo "id: " . $row["id"]. " - Name: " . $row["firstname"]. " " . $row["lastname"]. "< br>";
  }
} else {
  echo "0 results";
}

mysqli_close($conn);
?>

You can also put the result in an HTML table:

< ?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
  die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

$sql = "SELECT id, firstname, lastname FROM MyGuests ORDER BY lastname";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
  echo "< table>< tr>< th>ID< /th>< th>Name< /th>< /tr>";
  // output data of each row
  while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    echo "< tr>< td>".$row["id"]."< /td>< td>".$row["firstname"]." ".$row["lastname"]."< /td>< /tr>";
  }
  echo "< /table>";
} else {
  echo "0 results";
}
$conn->close();
?>

Select Data With PDO (+ Prepared Statements)

The following example uses prepared statements.
Here we select the id, firstname and lastname columns from the MyGuests table. The records will be ordered by the lastname column, and it will be displayed in an HTML table:

< ?php
echo "< table style='border: solid 1px black;'>";
echo "< tr>< th>Id< /th>< th>Firstname< /th>< th>Lastname< /th>< /tr>";

class TableRows extends RecursiveIteratorIterator {
  function __construct($it) {
    parent::__construct($it, self::LEAVES_ONLY);
  }

  function current() {
    return "< td style='width:150px;border:1px solid black;'>" . parent::current(). "< /td>";
  }

  function beginChildren() {
    echo "< tr>";
  }

  function endChildren() {
    echo "< /tr>" . "\n";
  }
}

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDBPDO";

try {
  $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
  $conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
  $stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT id, firstname, lastname FROM MyGuests ORDER BY lastname");
  $stmt->execute();

  // set the resulting array to associative
  $result = $stmt->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
  foreach(new TableRows(new RecursiveArrayIterator($stmt->fetchAll())) as $k=>$v) {
    echo $v;
  }
} catch(PDOException $e) {
  echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage();
}
$conn = null;
echo "< /table>";
?>