Sort by order of values in a select statement "in" clause in mysql

A bit of a trick....

SELECT * FROM your_table
WHERE id IN (5,2,6,8,12,1)
ORDER BY FIND_IN_SET(id,'5,2,6,8,12,1') DESC;

note that the list of ID's in the find_in_set is a string, so its quoted. Also note that without DESC, they results are returned in REVERSE order to what the list specified.

If your query is 60K, that's a sign that you're doing it the wrong way.

There is no other way to order the result set than by using an ORDER BY clause. You could have a complicated CASE clause in your order by listing all the elements in your IN clause again, but then your query would probably be 120K.

I know you don't want to, but you should put the values in the IN clause in a table or a temporary table and join with it. You can also include a SortOrder column in the temporary table, and order by that. Databases like joins. Doing it this way will help your query to perform well.

Actually, this is better:

SELECT * FROM your_table
WHERE id IN (5,2,6,8,12,1)
ORDER BY FIELD(id,5,2,6,8,12,1);

heres the FIELD documentation:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_field