Ordering returned results?

[dustbuster]

Hello all,

Say i have a table in my database that has an animal_type column in it. I want to take every entry from that table and display it but I want to display it by animal_type in a certain order.

Eg:
Display all Dog
Display all Cat
Display all Mouse
Display all Fish

Can I make an SQL query that will return these in this order or do I need to make a php function that sorts it in this way for me?
I could do multiple queries (1 for each animal_type but I'm not sure I want to do that.)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
D.

[ultraslacker]

You can use CASE in ORDER BY - SELECT * FROM animals ORDER BY CASE animal_type WHEN 'Dog' THEN 1 WHEN 'Cat' THEN 2 .... END;

[dustbuster]

That was exactly what I needed
Thanks!