Does postgres offset/limit not work the same way as mysql?

Question

I have a rails app (postgres + postGIS) with a post model with a rating column (integer). If I go into the console and do:

Post.order("rating DESC").map(&:id)
=> [9, 15, 19, 6, 17, 5, 4, 16, 1, 3, 13, 20, 14, 10, 8, 12, 7, 2, 18, 11]

yet if I try to cycle through those one at a time with limit and offset, I get bizarre results.

Post.order("rating DESC").limit(1).offset(0)
=> [#<Post id: 5, body: "Hi", rating: 4, location: #<RGeo::Geographic::SphericalPointImpl:0x81bb34c0 "POINT (-118.495 34.017)">, user_id: 8, created_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41", updated_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41">]

Why is that post #5? It should be #9. Anyway then it gets even more wacko when I apply an offset.

>Post.order("rating DESC").limit(1).offset(1)
=> [#<Post id: 5, body: "Hi", rating: 4, location: #<RGeo::Geographic::SphericalPointImpl:0x81bb34c0 "POINT (-118.495 34.017)">, user_id: 8, created_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41", updated_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41">]

>Post.order("rating DESC").limit(1).offset(2)
=> [#<Post id: 5, body: "Hi", rating: 4, location: #<RGeo::Geographic::SphericalPointImpl:0x81bb34c0 "POINT (-118.495 34.017)">, user_id: 8, created_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41", updated_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41">]

>Post.order("rating DESC").limit(1).offset(3)
=> [#<Post id: 5, body: "Hi", rating: 4, location: #<RGeo::Geographic::SphericalPointImpl:0x81bb34c0 "POINT (-118.495 34.017)">, user_id: 8, created_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41", updated_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41">]

>Post.order("rating DESC").limit(1).offset(4)
=> [#<Post id: 15, body: "I luv coffee", rating: 4, flagged: 0, location: #<RGeo::Geographic::SphericalPointImpl:0x82260df4 "POINT (-118.495 34.017)">, user_id: 1, created_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41", updated_at: "2012-07-25 22:43:41">]

mu is too short · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-26 20:35:23Z

3

Do you notice that rating is 4 for the only results that you're showing? You're sorting on rating with no secondary sort key so there's no guarantee about what order ties will appear in or even that the ties will be ordered the same way in two different calls.

Try adding a tie breaker to your order:

Post.order('rating DESC, id')

and then include the rating in what you're looking at:

Post.order('rating desc, id').select('id, rating').map { |p| [ p.id, p.rating ] }
Post.order('rating desc, id').select('id, rating').limit(1).offset(3).map { |p| [ p.id, p.rating ] }
#...

That should give you sensible and consistent results.

answered Jul 26, 2012 at 20:35

mu is too short

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