Order By FIELD To Sort MySQL Result For 'IN' Clause

I got a problem when I tried to sort a MySQL query while I use ‘IN’ clause. For example:

<?php
    ...
    $ID = 7,4,1,2;
    $query = "SELECT ID,Description FROM mytable WHERE ID IN (".$ID.")";
    $result = mysql_query($query);
    ...
?>

The result will be displayed with the ID sorted from the less value to the biggest one :

ID   |   Description   |
———————
1   |   Apple       |
2   |   Blueberry   |
4   |   Grape       |
7   |   Strawberry   |

That is not the result we want. I want to display the result sorted based on the ‘IN’ values.

I got a solution for this to add a FIELD command so the result can be sorted based on the ‘IN’ values. the FIELD command can sort numeric and string values as well. So here is the fixed.

Source code

<?php
    ...
    $ID = 7,4,1,2;
    $query = "SELECT ID,Description FROM mytable WHERE ID IN (".$ID.") ORDER BY FIELD(ID,".$ID.")";
    $result = mysql_query($query);
    ...
?>

And here is the result.

ID   |   Description   |
———————
7   |   Strawberry   |
4   |   Grape       |
1   |   Apple       |
2   |   Blueberry   |

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Order By FIELD To Sort MySQL Result For ‘IN’ Clause