How to delete duplicates on a MySQL table?

Question

I need to DELETE duplicated rows for specified sid on a MySQL table.

How can I do this with an SQL query?

Answer 1

This always seems to work for me:

CREATE TABLE NoDupeTable LIKE DupeTable; 
INSERT NoDupeTable SELECT * FROM DupeTable group by CommonField1,CommonFieldN;

Which keeps the lowest ID on each of the dupes and the rest of the non-dupe records.

I've also taken to doing the following so that the dupe issue no longer occurs after the removal:

CREATE TABLE NoDupeTable LIKE DupeTable; 
Alter table NoDupeTable Add Unique `Unique` (CommonField1,CommonField2);
INSERT IGNORE NoDupeTable SELECT * FROM DupeTable;

In other words, I create a duplicate of the first table, add a unique index on the fields I don't want duplicates of, and then do an Insert IGNORE which has the advantage of not failing as a normal Insert would the first time it tried to add a duplicate record based on the two fields and rather ignores any such records.

Moving fwd it becomes impossible to create any duplicate records based on those two fields.