How to sort data from a table in alphabetical order?

[angel1987]

I am tired of searching online because everywhere it says use ORDER BY ..... ASC | DESC.

 

But that does not work for ordering data in alphabetical order. I don't understand how come that is working for so many people?

 

My query is:

"SELECT * FROM categories WHERE parentid = '$getid'";

 

I am listing categories on left side bar and there are more than 70 categories. I want them to appear in alphabetical order starting from A - Z.

 

I know there is some different syntax in sql query for ordering data alphabetically because i saw it once and it worked but i just forgot where i read it and now i am lost.

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Since you did not show the query you tried using ORDER BY and the output you did get, it is a little hard for anyone one here to tell you why it did not work.

[angel1987]

Ok, here is the query with ORDER BY

"SELECT * FROM categories WHERE parentid = '$getid' ORDER BY category DESC";

 

category is the column with names of the category.

[PFMaBiSmAd]

And that gave you output in DESCending alphabetical order didn't it?

[angel1987]

Ok it gave me a DESC order from Z - A and so i made it ASC and it gave me an order from A-Z but it is also showing categories starting from I, P and S before A.

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Your data probably contains white-space/non-printing characters (spaces, carriage-returns, nulls, line-feeds, ...) that is causing it be sorted out of order.

 

Where did your data originate and how did it get inserted into your table?

 

There are literally millions of php based web sites that use ORDER BY in queries that work. Had you stated or shown what results you are getting in your first post in this thread (where it belonged), you could have gotten an answer quicker, rather than playing around with what problem you actually are having.

[angel1987]

Ok there was no spaces or special characters but i just deleted those records and added them again from the admin section and it worked.

 

Thanks very much for your help.