how to get the position of sorted rows using mysql and php

Question

I have a table which stores high-scores, along with player ids. I want to be able to extract a record by a players id, and then get the rank, or position of their score in the table. Means, Basically I want to be able to say "you are in Nth" position, purely based on the players score against all other scores. For Example: if i am at 46th position then to me the position message will be like you are at 46th position out of total scores. Can anyone show me small example?

Answer 1

There are two ways of doing it:

Method 1:

SET @i = 0;

SELECT * FROM 
scores s1 INNER JOIN (SELECT *, @i := @i + 1 AS rank FROM scores ORDER BY score DESC) AS s2 USING (id);

Method 2:

SELECT *, (SELECT COUNT(1) AS num FROM scores WHERE scores.score > s1.score) + 1 AS rank FROM scores AS s1
ORDER BY rank asc

Answer 2

This will provide duplicate rank values when there are duplicates:

SELECT t.playerid,
       t.highscore,
       (SELECT COUNT(*)
          FROM TABLE x 
         WHERE x.playerid = t.playerid
           AND x.highscore >= t.highscore) AS rank
  FROM TABLE t
 WHERE t.playerid = ?

IE: If three players have the same score for second place, they'll all have a rank value of two.

This will give a distinct value - three players tied for second place, only one will be ranked as 2nd:

SELECT x.playerid,
       x.highscore,
       x.rank
  FROM (SELECT t.playerid,
               t.highscore,
               @rownum := @rownum + 1 AS rank
          FROM TABLE t
          JOIN (SELECT @rownum := 0) r
      ORDER BY t.highscore DESC) x
 WHERE x.playerid = ?

Answer 3

Here is an example.

You want to store the user's ID when they log in, like so...

 $_SESSION['username'] = $usernamefromdb;
 $_SESSION['id'] = $userid;

And then you want to open a session on every page on yoru website that you will be pulling dynamic information depending on the $_SESSION['id']

 session_start();

Then find the row of data in the datebase according to the userID

 $userid = $_SESSION['id'];
 $rank_query = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE id='$userid'";
 $rank_result = mysqli_query($cxn, $rank_query) or die("Couldn't execute query.");
 $row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($rank_result)

Then using PHP, declare the nth postiion as a variable. And pull the total amount of rows from the DB

$rank = $row['rank'];
$all = $numrows = mysqli_num_rows($result);

echo out the players rank.

echo $rank . "out of" . $all;