Basic ranking of MySQL data and printing result with php

Question

I have a table which in which I want to rank rows where one of the columns equals a value I have defined.

For example in this table I want to get all rows where Col1 = a, then find what is the rank of the row in which Col3 = Ross (ranked by score in Col2).

Col1 | Col2 | Col3
------------------
a    | 10   | John
a    | 6    | Nick
a    | 8    | Ross
a    | 2    | Tim
a    | 4    | Paul
b    | 9    | John
b    | 3    | Nick
b    | 5    | Ross
b    | 7    | Tim
b    | 1    | Paul

Ultimately I want to calculate this:

Col1 | Col2 | Col3 | Rank
-------------------------
a    | 10   | John | 1
a    | 8    | Ross | 2
a    | 6    | Nick | 3
a    | 4    | Paul | 4
a    | 2    | Tim  | 5

And print the result "2".

I can sort the table with this query, but dont; know how to then print the result I need (with php).

$query = "SELECT * FROM exampleTable WHERE Col1 = a order by Col2 DESC";

Answer 1

Try this:

"SET @rank=0; SELECT * FROM (SELECT *, @rank:=@rank+1 AS Rank FROM exampleTable WHERE Col1 = 'a' order by Col2 DESC) AS t"

Here is a test run that shows it working.

If you want to find Ross's rank you can run the query with WHERE Col3 = 'Ross' added and only the rank column selected, as demonstrated here