The MySQL/MariaDB ‘DISTINCT’ Statement, With Examples

The MySQL DISTINCT operator returns only unique values from a column from a database table; duplicates are not returned.  Here’s how to use it.

The DISTINCT operator can be useful in many scenarios; for example, you may want to generate a list of countries you have shipped to, or you may want to provide a drop-down menu containing unique product options for the user to select.

Example Usage of MySQL DISTINCT

Examples will use the following table:

table_orders:

To get a list of countries that have been shipped to, without duplicates, run the following query:

SELECT DISTINCT shipping_country FROM table_orders;

…which will result in:

Counting Unique Values in a Columns

If you want to know how many distinct/unique values there are in a table’s column:

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT shipping_country) FROM table_orders;

…which will result in:

Using DISTINCT with Multiple Columns

You can use the DISTINCT statement to SELECT from multiple columns – the combination of the values will be used to generate the unique results:

SELECT DISTINCT
    shipping_country, product_category
FROM
    table_orders
;

…which will return:

As you can see, only unique combinations of the two columns passed to the DISTINCT statement are shown.

If you’re using MySQL with PHP to build apps – why not consider a PHP framework like Laravel?