GROUP BY taking precedence over ORDER BY

[Anon]

hi. i'm trying to get a list of usernames and dates according to who updated their journal last, and i'm running into a problem where GROUP BY is ignoring the ORDER BY clause that comes next. here's my query:

SELECT b.date_added, u.username FROM blogs AS b, users AS u WHERE b.user_id=u.id GROUP BY b.user_id ORDER BY b.date_added DESC;

the GROUP BY is not allowing b.date_added to be the latest date.

i've tried a bunch of other ways to no avail and would really appreciate some help.

thanks
olivia

[Anon]

That is not a proper group by query.

select max(b.date_added) as date_added,
u.username FROM blogs AS b, users AS u WHERE b.user_id=u.id GROUP BY b.user_name ORDER BY date_added DESC

(I should recommend that you read up on group by and not in the MYSQL documentation as they have made a real mess of their implementation.)

[Anon]

thanks for the info on GROUP BY...

BUT, that still doesn't solve the problem. it still returns the date and username in random order...

[Anon]

Maybe we are att crosspurposes with respect to what result we are expecting. My query will get the last entry for each user sorted by the date descendingly. The usernames (within the same date) may come in any order. You can add username to the order by clause. maybe you could explain in more detail what result you want, preferablye with some sample data and the expected result.