What is the best practice for ordering results in a MySQL query based on a specific list of IDs in PHP?

When you have a specific list of IDs that you want to use as a reference for ordering the results in a MySQL query in PHP, you can use the MySQL FIELD() function along with the ORDER BY clause. This function allows you to specify the order in which the IDs should appear in the result set.

$ids = [2, 5, 3, 1, 4]; // List of IDs in the desired order

$idsString = implode(',', $ids); // Convert the array of IDs to a comma-separated string

$query = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE id IN ($idsString) ORDER BY FIELD(id, $idsString)";

// Execute the query and fetch the results