mysql - get a recursive parent list

Question

Using MySQL, I want to return a list of parents, from a table that has a field structure like this. ID,PARENTID,NAME (a standard parent-child hierarchy). I would like to traverse "up" the tree to return a list of ALL 'parents'.

I realize that "nested set", might be a better way to handle this - but currently I cannot change the structure of the data. I will look to do that in the future. Currently - my set of data will realistically contain a few levels of depth - nothing crazy... maybe 2-5 so my recursive hit shouldn't be 'too expensive'.

I've looked at the solutions presented in SQL Server get parent list - but this syntax bombs in mySQL...

Does anyone have an example of how to do this?

@kevin - thx for link - but I still get error. ("every derived table must have it's own alias")

Here's what I did (modified syntax form above article - to 'fit' MySQL) - I clearly missed something...

SELECT parents.*
FROM  (
    SELECT taskID,  task,  parentID,  0 as level
    FROM   tasks
    WHERE taskidID = 9147
    UNION ALL
    SELECT  taskID, task,  parentID,  Level + 1 
    FROM   tasks
    WHERE  taskID = (SELECT parentID FROM parents ORDER BY level DESC LIMIT 1)
    )

thoughts???

EXAMPLE:

ID      PARENTID    NAME
9146    0       thing1
9147    0       thing2
9148    9146        thing3
9149    9148        thing4
9150    0       thing5
9151    9149        thing6

Query for parents of "thing3" Returns "9148,9146"

Query for parents of "thing6" Returns "9149,9148,9146,0"

Answer 1

Here, I made a little function for you, I checked it in my database (MAMP) and it works fine

use mySchema;
drop procedure if exists getParents;

DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE getParents (in_ID int)
BEGIN
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS results;
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS temp2;
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS temp1;

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE temp1 AS
  select distinct ID, parentID
    from tasks
    where parentID = in_ID;

create TEMPORARY table results AS
  Select ID, parentID from temp1;

WHILE (select count(*) from temp1) DO
  create TEMPORARY table temp2 as
    select distinct ID, parentID 
      from tasks 
      where parentID in (select ID from temp1);

  insert into results select ID, parentID from temp2;
  drop TEMPORARY table if exists temp1;
  create TEMPORARY table temp1 AS
    select ID, parentID from temp2;
  drop TEMPORARY table if exists temp2;

END WHILE;


select * from results;

DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS results;
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS temp1;

END $$
DELIMITER ;

this code will return all parents to any depth. you can obviously add any additional fields to the results

use it like this

call getParents(9148)

for example