Same output in two different lateral joins - sql

Question

I'm working on a bit of PostgreSQL to grab the first 10 and last 10 invoices of every month between certain dates. I am having unexpected output in the lateral joins. Firstly the limit is not working, and each of the array_agg aggregates is returning hundreds of rows instead of limiting to 10. Secondly, the aggregates appear to be the same, even though one is ordered ASC and the other DESC.
How can I retrieve only the first 10 and last 10 invoices of each month group?
SELECT first.invoice_month,
array_agg(first.id) first_ten,
array_agg(last.id) last_ten
FROM public.invoice i
JOIN LATERAL (
SELECT id, to_char(invoice_date, 'Mon-yy') AS invoice_month
FROM public.invoice
WHERE id = i.id
ORDER BY invoice_date, id ASC
LIMIT 10
) first ON i.id = first.id
JOIN LATERAL (
SELECT id, to_char(invoice_date, 'Mon-yy') AS invoice_month
FROM public.invoice
WHERE id = i.id
ORDER BY invoice_date, id DESC
LIMIT 10
) last on i.id = last.id
WHERE i.invoice_date BETWEEN date '2017-10-01' AND date '2018-09-30'
GROUP BY first.invoice_month, last.invoice_month;

Answer 1

This can be done with a recursive query that will generate the interval of months for who we need to find the first and last 10 invoices.
WITH RECURSIVE all_months AS (
SELECT date_trunc('month','2018-01-01'::TIMESTAMP) as c_date, date_trunc('month', '2018-05-11'::TIMESTAMP) as end_date, to_char('2018-01-01'::timestamp, 'YYYY-MM') as current_month
UNION
SELECT c_date + interval '1 month' as c_date,
end_date,
to_char(c_date + INTERVAL '1 month', 'YYYY-MM') as current_month
FROM all_months
WHERE c_date + INTERVAL '1 month' <= end_date
),
invocies_with_month as (
SELECT *, to_char(invoice_date::TIMESTAMP, 'YYYY-MM') invoice_month FROM invoice
)
SELECT current_month, array_agg(first_10.id), 'FIRST 10' as type FROM all_months
JOIN LATERAL (
SELECT * FROM invocies_with_month
WHERE all_months.current_month = invoice_month AND invoice_date >= '2018-01-01' AND invoice_date <= '2018-05-11'
ORDER BY invoice_date ASC limit 10
) first_10 ON TRUE
GROUP BY current_month
UNION
SELECT current_month, array_agg(last_10.id), 'LAST 10' as type FROM all_months
JOIN LATERAL (
SELECT * FROM invocies_with_month
WHERE all_months.current_month = invoice_month AND invoice_date >= '2018-01-01' AND invoice_date <= '2018-05-11'
ORDER BY invoice_date DESC limit 10
) last_10 ON TRUE
GROUP BY current_month;
In the code above, '2018-01-01' and '2018-05-11' represent the dates between we want to find the invoices. Based on those dates, we generate the months (2018-01, 2018-02, 2018-03, 2018-04, 2018-05) that we need to find the invoices for.
We store this data in all_months.
After we get the months, we do a lateral join in order to join the invoices for every month. We need 2 lateral joins in order to get the first and last 10 invoices.
Finally, the result is represented as:
current_month - the month
array_agg - ids of all selected invoices for that month
type - type of the selected invoices ('first 10' or 'last 10').
So in the current implementation, you will have 2 rows for each month (if there is at least 1 invoice for that month). You can easily join that in one row if you need to.

Answer 2

LIMIT is working fine. It's your query that's broken. JOIN is just 100% the wrong tool here; it doesn't even do anything close to what you need. By joining up to 10 rows with up to another 10 rows, you get up to 100 rows back. There's also no reason to self join just to combine filters.
Consider instead window queries. In particular, we have the dense_rank function, which can number every row in the result set according to groups:
SELECT
invoice_month,
time_of_month,
ARRAY_AGG(id) invoice_ids
FROM (
SELECT
id,
invoice_month,
-- Categorize as end or beginning of month
CASE
WHEN month_rank <= 10 THEN 'beginning'
WHEN month_reverse_rank <= 10 THEN 'end'
ELSE 'bug' -- Should never happen. Just a fall back in case of a bug.
END AS time_of_month
FROM (
SELECT
id,
invoice_month,
dense_rank() OVER (PARTITION BY invoice_month ORDER BY invoice_date) month_rank,
dense_rank() OVER (PARTITION BY invoice_month ORDER BY invoice_date DESC) month_rank_reverse
FROM (
SELECT
id,
invoice_date,
to_char(invoice_date, 'Mon-yy') AS invoice_month
FROM public.invoice
WHERE invoice_date BETWEEN date '2017-10-01' AND date '2018-09-30'
) AS fiscal_year_invoices
) ranked_invoices
-- Get first and last 10
WHERE month_rank <= 10 OR month_reverse_rank <= 10
) first_and_last_by_month
GROUP BY
invoice_month,
time_of_month
Don't be intimidated by the length. This query is actually very straightforward; it just needed a few subqueries.
This is what it does logically:
Fetch the rows for the fiscal year in question
Assign a "rank" to the row within its month, both counting from the beginning and from the end
Filter out everything that doesn't rank in the 10 top for its month (counting from either direction)
Adds an indicator as to whether it was at the beginning or end of the month. (Note that if there's less than 20 rows in a month, it will categorize more of them as "beginning".)
Aggregate the IDs together
This is the tool set designed for the job you're trying to do. If really needed, you can adjust this approach slightly to get them into the same row, but you have to aggregate before joining the results together and then join on the month; you can't join and then aggregate.