PHP SQL – Advanced delete query
Question by Marc
I have a table with 3 columns: id, date and name. What I am looking for is to delete the records that have a duplicate name. The rule should be to keep the record that has the oldest date. For instance in the example below, there is 3 records with the name Paul. So I would like to keep the one that has the oldest date (id=1) and remove all the others (id = 4 and 6). I know how to make insert, update, etc queries, but here I do not see how to make the trick work. Thank you in advance for your replies. Cheers. Marc
id, date, name
1, 2012-03-10, Paul
2, 2012-03-10, James
4, 2012-03-12, Paul
5, 2012-03-11, Ricardo
6, 2012-03-13, Paul
mysql_query(?);
Answer by Starx
The best suggestion I can give you is create a unique index on name and avoid all the trouble.
Follow the steps as Peter Kiss said from 2 to 3. Then do this
ALTER Table tablename ADD UNIQUE INDEX name (name)
Then Follow 4 Insert everything from the temporary table to the original.
All the new duplicate rows, will be omitted
