This is the content table:

ContentID | CategoryID | Position | Other1 | Other2
===================================================
1         | 1          | NULL     | abcd   | efgh
2         | 1          | NULL     | abcd   | efgh
3         | 1          | NULL     | abcd   | efgh
4         | 2          | NULL     | abcd   | efgh
5         | 2          | NULL     | abcd   | efgh
6         | 2          | NULL     | abcd   | efgh

These are the queries I'll be running:

SELECT ContentID FROM content WHERE CategoryID = 1 ORDER BY Position
SELEC开发者_运维百科T ContentID FROM content WHERE CategoryID = 2 ORDER BY Position

Now I want to implement move up, move down, move to top and move to bottom function for content. All I need to do is to populate the Position column with numbers:

ContentID | CategoryID | Position
=================================
1         | 1          | 1
2         | 1          | 2
3         | 1          | 3
4         | 2          | 1
5         | 2          | 2
6         | 2          | 3

Is it possible to achieve this via single query in MySQL? Something like:

UPDATE content
SET Position = <ROW_NUMBER>
WHERE CategoryID = 1
ORDER BY Position

UPDATE content
SET Position = <ROW_NUMBER>
WHERE CategoryID = 2
ORDER BY Position

This should work

update 
content,
(
  select 
  @row_number:=ifnull(@row_number, 0)+1 as new_position,
  ContentID 
  from content
  where CategoryID=1
  order by position
) as table_position
set position=table_position.new_position
where table_position.ContentID=content.ContentID;

But I would prefer to apply this first, to unset user defined variable

set @row_number:=0;

Added by Mchl:

You can do that in one statement like this

update 
content,
(
  select 
  @row_number:=ifnull(@row_number, 0)+1 as new_position,
  ContentID 
  from content
  where CategoryID=1
  order by position
) as table_position,
(
  select @row_number:=0
) as rowNumberInit
set position=table_position.new_position
where table_position.ContentID=content.ContentID;

Here is the solution that worked for me (hope it helps someone):

-- The following query re-populates the "Position" column with sequential numbers so that:
-- a) sequence is reset to 1 for each "group"
-- b) sequence is based on row number relative to each group depending on how ORDER BY is specified
-- c) sequence does not disturb the original order but
-- c.a) fixes NULLs so that they are moved to top
-- c.b) fixes duplicate position values depending on how ORDER BY is specified

-- ContentID is the primary key
-- CategoryID is a foreign key
-- Position column contains relative position of a record

SET @current_group = NULL;
SET @current_count = NULL;

UPDATE 
content
SET Position = CASE
    WHEN @current_group = CategoryID THEN @current_count := @current_count + 1
    WHEN @current_group := CategoryID THEN @current_count := 1
END
ORDER BY CategoryID, Position -- <Column 3>, <Column 4>, ...

I think it would be very tedious to run additional queries all the time when you do some operations on the table. I would create a trigger that fires every time you want to insert/update something in the table.

In your case, a BEFORE UPDATE and BEFORE INSERT trigger would be advisable. If you also want to keep it clean after the deletion of an etntry, add an AFTER DELETE trigger.

Initial:

UPDATE content as uc 
SET Position = (
    SELECT count(*) 
    FROM content as sc 
    WHERE sc.CategoryId = uc.CategoryId AND sc.Position is not null)
WHERE uc.Position is null
ORDER BY uc.ContentId

Before insert:

UPDATE content
SET Position = Position+1
WHERE Position >= newPos AND CategoryId = newCat