SQLite Limit

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use SQLite LIMIT clause to constrain the number of rows returned by a query.

Introduction to SQLite LIMIT clause

The LIMIT clause is an optional part of the  SELECT statement. You use the LIMIT clause to constrain the number of rows returned by the query.

For example, a SELECT statement may return one million rows. However, if you just need the first 10 rows in the result set, you can add the LIMIT clause to the SELECT statement to retrieve 10 rows.

The following illustrates the syntax of the LIMIT clause.

SELECT
	column_list
FROM
	table
LIMIT row_count;

The row_count is a positive integer that specifies the number of rows returned.

For example, to get the first 10 rows in the tracks table, you use the following statement:

SELECT
	trackId,
	name
FROM
	tracks
LIMIT 10;

Try It

If you want to get the first 10 rows starting from the 10^th row of the result set, you use OFFSET keyword as the following:

SELECT
	column_list
FROM
	table
LIMIT row_count OFFSET offset;

Or you can use the following shorthand syntax of the LIMIT OFFSET clause:

SELECT
	column_list
FROM
	table
LIMIT offset, row_count;

For example, to get 10 rows starting from the 11^th row in the tracks table, you use the following statement:

SELECT
	trackId,
	name
FROM
	tracks
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 10;

Try It

You often find the uses of OFFSET in web applications for paginating result sets.

SQLite LIMIT and ORDER BY clause

You should always use the LIMIT clause with the  ORDER BY clause. Because you want to get a number of rows in a specified order, not in an unspecified order.

The ORDER BY clause appears before the LIMIT clause in the SELECT statement. SQLite sorts the result set before getting the number of rows specified in the LIMIT clause.

SELECT
   column_list
FROM
   table
ORDER BY column_1
LIMIT row_count;

For example, to get the top 10 biggest tracks by size, you use the following query:

SELECT
	trackid,
	name,
	bytes
FROM
	tracks
ORDER BY
	bytes DESC
LIMIT 10;

Try It

To get the 5 shortest tracks, you sort the tracks by the length specified by milliseconds column using ORDER BY clause and get the first 5 rows using LIMIT clause.

SELECT
	trackid,
	name,
	milliseconds
FROM
	tracks
ORDER BY
	milliseconds ASC
LIMIT 5;

Try It

Getting the n^th highest and the lowest value

You can use the ORDER BY and LIMIT clauses to get the n^th highest or lowest value rows. For example, you may want to know the second-longest track, the third smallest track, etc.

To do this, you use the following steps:

1. First, use ORDER BY to sort the result set in ascending order in case you want to get the n^th lowest value, or descending order if you want to get the n^th highest value.
2. Second, use the LIMIT OFFSET clause to get the n^th highest or the n^th lowest row.

The following statement returns the second-longest track in the tracks table.

SELECT
	trackid,
	name,
	milliseconds
FROM
	tracks
ORDER BY
	milliseconds DESC
LIMIT 1 OFFSET 1;

Try It

The following statement gets the third smallest track on the tracks table.

SELECT
	trackid,
	name,
	bytes
FROM
	tracks
ORDER BY
	bytes
LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2;

Try It

In this tutorial, you have learned how to use SQLite LIMIT clause to constrain the number of rows returned by the query.