How to select N records from a table in mysql

Question

How can I get only 10 records from a table where there are more than 1000 records. I have a test table with rowid, name, cost.

   select  name, cost from test;

here I want to select only first 10 rows and dont want to select rowid.

Answer 1

To select the first ten records you can use LIMIT followed by the number of records you need:

SELECT name, cost FROM test LIMIT 10

To select ten records from a specific location, you can use LIMIT 10, 100

SELECT name, cost FROM test LIMIT 100, 10

This will display records 101-110

SELECT name, cost FROM test LIMIT 10, 100

This will display records 11-111

To make sure you retrieve the correct results, make sure you ORDER BY the results too, otherwise the returned rows may be random-ish

You can read more @ http://php.about.com/od/mysqlcommands/g/Limit_sql.htm

Answer 2

You should have an ORDER BY clause when you use LIMIT , so that you will get the same recordset if you call it two times in succession and no data has changed.

So, do something like:

select  name, cost 
from test 
order by rowid
limit 10; 

Answer 3

SELECT TOP(10) name, cost FROM test;

Answer 4

Using this query, you can get first 10 records.

SELECT employee_id, first_name 
FROM employees  
LIMIT 10;

Answer 5

using below query can get first N records suppose N=10

SELECT name, cost FROM test LIMIT 10;

suppose you want to get 10 records starting from the row M then (row index start from 0)

SELECT name, cost FROM test LIMIT 10 OFFSET (M-1);