How can PHP developers utilize features like row_number() in MySQL queries to efficiently handle data grouping and sorting?

When handling data grouping and sorting in MySQL queries, PHP developers can use the row_number() function to efficiently assign a unique sequential integer to each row within a partition of a result set. This can be particularly useful when implementing pagination or ranking functionality in a web application.

<?php
// Establish a connection to the MySQL database
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare the SQL query with row_number() function
$sql = "SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY column_name) as row_num FROM mytable";

// Execute the query
$stmt = $pdo->query($sql);

// Fetch the results and iterate through the rows
while ($row = $stmt->fetch()) {
    // Access the row number for each row
    $rowNumber = $row['row_num'];
    // Process the data as needed
}
?>