Guide

Select first row for each group in Postgres

Postgres snippet for grabbing the first row in each distinct group by group

Given a table seasons:

idteampoints
1Liverpool82
2Liverpool84
3Brighton34
4Brighton28
5Liverpool79

We want to find the rows containing the maximum number of points per team.

The expected output we want is:

idteampoints
3Brighton34
2Liverpool84

From the SQL Editor, you can run a query like:

select distinct
  on (team) id,
  team,
  points
from
  seasons
order by
  team,
  points desc;

The important bits here are:

  • The desc keyword to order the points from highest to lowest.
  • The distinct keyword that tells Postgres to only return a single row per team.

This query can also be executed via psql or any other query editor if you prefer to connect directly to the database.