April 2, 2012
How do I get the highest number in a column?
Question by Skiroid
My table named pictures has a column named pic and I’m wanting to get the highest number in that column. Each row has a unique number in pic and it goes up by 1 each row. But one or two rows won’t have a number in the column and will have some text instead. Like grapes.
Here’s an example of the table…
TABLE: pictures
___________________
| caption | pic |
|-------------------|
| some | 1 |
| random | 2 |
| thing | 3 |
| here |grapes |
|___________________|
So, how would I get the highest number in the column pic which would be 3?
Column pic is a varchar.
Answer by zerkms
SELECT MAX(CONVERT(pic, UNSIGNED INTEGER)) AS max_pic
FROM pictures
WHERE CONVERT(pic, UNSIGNED INTEGER) IS NOT NULL
The WHERE pic = pic + 0 condition is a trick that helps checking if it is a number value
Answer by Starx
Use MAX() to get the maximum value available. Like this
SELECT MAX(pic) FROM `pictures` WHERE CONVERT(`pic`, SIGNED INTEGER) IS NOT NULL
