Returning query results in predefined order

Question

Is it possible to do a SELECT statement with a predetermined order, ie. selecting IDs 7,2,5,9 and 8 and returning them in that order, based on

Answer 1

Best I can think of is adding a second Column orderColumn:

7 1
2 2
5 3
9 4 
8 5

And then just do a ORDER BY orderColumn

Answer 2

Could you include a case expression that maps your IDs 7,2,5,... to the ordinals 1,2,3,... and then order by that expression?

Answer 3

Your best bet is:

ORDER BY FIELD(ID,7,2,4,5,8) 

...but it's still ugly.

Answer 4

This works in Oracle. Can you do something similar in MySql?

SELECT ID_FIELD
FROM SOME_TABLE
WHERE ID_FIELD IN(11,10,14,12,13)
ORDER BY
  CASE WHEN ID_FIELD = 11 THEN 0
       WHEN ID_FIELD = 10 THEN 1
       WHEN ID_FIELD = 14 THEN 2
       WHEN ID_FIELD = 12 THEN 3
       WHEN ID_FIELD = 13 THEN 4
  END

Answer 5

All ordering is done by the ORDER BY keywords, you can only however sort ascending and descending. If you are using a language such as PHP you can then sort them accordingly using some code but I do not believe it is possible with MySQL alone.