If you want to be able to have a SELECT without problems of the parent id having to be lower than child id, a function could be used. It supports also multiple children (as a tree should do) and the tree can have multiple heads. It also ensure to break if a loop exists in the data.
I wanted to use dynamic SQL to be able to pass the table/columns names, but functions in MySQL don't support this.
DELIMITER $$
CREATE FUNCTION `isSubElement`(pParentId INT, pId INT) RETURNS int(11)
DETERMINISTIC
READS SQL DATA
BEGIN
DECLARE isChild,curId,curParent,lastParent int;
SET isChild = 0;
SET curId = pId;
SET curParent = -1;
SET lastParent = -2;
WHILE lastParent <> curParent AND curParent <> 0 AND curId <> -1 AND curParent <> pId AND isChild = 0 DO
SET lastParent = curParent;
SELECT ParentId from `test` where id=curId limit 1 into curParent;
IF curParent = pParentId THEN
SET isChild = 1;
END IF;
SET curId = curParent;
END WHILE;
RETURN isChild;
END$$
Here, the table test has to be modified to the real table name and the columns (ParentId,Id) may have to be adjusted for your real names.
Usage :
SET @wantedSubTreeId = 3;
SELECT * FROM test WHERE isSubElement(@wantedSubTreeId,id) = 1 OR ID = @wantedSubTreeId;
Result :
3 7 k
5 3 d
9 3 f
1 5 a
SQL for test creation :
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `test` (
`Id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`ParentId` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`Name` varchar(300) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`Id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
insert into test (id, parentid, name) values(3,7,'k');
insert into test (id, parentid, name) values(5,3,'d');
insert into test (id, parentid, name) values(9,3,'f');
insert into test (id, parentid, name) values(1,5,'a');
insert into test (id, parentid, name) values(6,2,'o');
insert into test (id, parentid, name) values(2,8,'c');
EDIT : Here is a fiddle to test it yourself. It forced me to change the delimiter using the predefined one, but it works.
