MySQL INNER JOIN select only one row from second table

Question

You need to have a subquery to get their latest date per user ID.

SELECT  a.*, c.*
FROM users a 
    INNER JOIN payments c
        ON a.id = c.user_ID
    INNER JOIN
    (
        SELECT user_ID, MAX(date) maxDate
        FROM payments
        GROUP BY user_ID
    ) b ON c.user_ID = b.user_ID AND
            c.date = b.maxDate
WHERE a.package = 1

SELECT u.*, p.*
FROM users AS u
INNER JOIN payments AS p ON p.id = (
    SELECT id
    FROM payments AS p2
    WHERE p2.user_id = u.id
    ORDER BY date DESC
    LIMIT 1
)

Or

SELECT u.*, p.*
FROM users AS u
INNER JOIN payments AS p ON p.user_id = u.id
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
    SELECT 1
    FROM payments AS p2
    WHERE
        p2.user_id = p.user_id AND
        (p2.date > p.date OR (p2.date = p.date AND p2.id > p.id))
)

These solutions are better than the accepted answer because they work correctly when there are multiple payments with same user and date. You can try on SQL Fiddle.

SELECT u.*, p.*, max(p.date)
FROM payments p
JOIN users u ON u.id=p.user_id AND u.package = 1
GROUP BY u.id
ORDER BY p.date DESC

Check out this sqlfiddle

   SELECT u.* 
        FROM users AS u
        INNER JOIN (
            SELECT p.*,
             @num := if(@id = user_id, @num + 1, 1) as row_number,
             @id := user_id as tmp
            FROM payments AS p,
                 (SELECT @num := 0) x,
                 (SELECT @id := 0) y
            ORDER BY p.user_id ASC, date DESC)
        ON (p.user_id = u.id) and (p.row_number=1)
        WHERE u.package = 1

There are two problems with your query:

1. Every table and subquery needs a name, so you have to name the subquery INNER JOIN (SELECT ...) AS p ON ....
2. The subquery as you have it only returns one row period, but you actually want one row for each user. For that you need one query to get the max date and then self-join back to get the whole row.

Assuming there are no ties for payments.date, try:

    SELECT u.*, p.* 
    FROM (
        SELECT MAX(p.date) AS date, p.user_id 
        FROM payments AS p
        GROUP BY p.user_id
    ) AS latestP
    INNER JOIN users AS u ON latestP.user_id = u.id
    INNER JOIN payments AS p ON p.user_id = u.id AND p.date = latestP.date
    WHERE u.package = 1

@John Woo's answer helped me solve a similar problem. I've improved upon his answer by setting the correct ordering as well. This has worked for me:

SELECT  a.*, c.*
FROM users a 
    INNER JOIN payments c
        ON a.id = c.user_ID
    INNER JOIN (
        SELECT user_ID, MAX(date) as maxDate FROM
        (
            SELECT user_ID, date
            FROM payments
            ORDER BY date DESC
        ) d
        GROUP BY user_ID
    ) b ON c.user_ID = b.user_ID AND
           c.date = b.maxDate
WHERE a.package = 1

I'm not sure how efficient this is, though.