MySql - order by string value first

Question

I've got the following table Foobar that looks like this:

+----+-------------+
| ID | Description |
+----+-------------+
| 12 | aab         |
+----+-------------+
| 13 | fff         |
+----+-------------+
| 14 | fff         |
+----+-------------+
| 15 | xab         |
+----+-------------+

What I would like is to print out all the descriptions in order. However I would first of all like the values "fff" to be right at the top. In other words the output should be as follows: fff, fff, aab, xab.

So a simple: "SELECT foobar.description FROM foobar ORDER BY foobar.description ASC" will not work.

Answer 1

In MySQL this works

SELECT foobar.description 
FROM foobar 
ORDER BY foobar.description <> 'fff',
         foobar.description ASC

But generally you can also use a case

SELECT foobar.description 
FROM foobar 
ORDER BY case when foobar.description = 'fff' then 1 else 2 end,
         foobar.description ASC

Answer 2

select foobar.description from foobar
order by case when foobar.description = 'fff' then 1 else 2 end,
foobar.description asc