select next two and previous two

[LucidParody]

Hi, I have a table with rows identifed with various unique ids. How do I, if I know the current id value, select the two rows before and the two rows after the row in question?

What i've got so far is something like this:

$lower = $id - 2;
$upper = $id + 2;
$query = "SELECT * FROM photos WHERE id<='$lower' AND id>= '$upper'"

But this won't work for me because there might be missing IDs. For example, in the situation where the IDs are like so (if i were starting with 5):

2
3
5
9
10

and I'd want all five of thsoe IDs selected, the query above would only select 3 and 5. 🙁

TIA

[LordShryku]

Why not split this up into two queries and save yourself the headache? Or use a union....

$query = "(SELECT * FROM photos WHERE id <= '".$id."' ORDER BY id LIMIT 3)
          UNION
          (SELECT * FROM photos WHERE id > '".$id."' ORDER BY id LIMIT 2)
          ORDER BY id";

[LucidParody]

I'm running mysql 3.x -- is there an equivlant of union for this version? 🙁

[LucidParody]

bump

anyone? 🙁

[LordShryku]

With your backdated MySQL version you may just be wasting your time trying to do this with one query. Why not just use two queries?