Working with REVERSE in MySQL

Intro

MySQL provides the REVERSE function to invert the order of the characters in a string. In this article, we will learn how to use REVERSE in MySQL.

The Syntax

The basic syntax of a REVERSE is as follows:

SELECT REVERSE(string_name);

• string is the string to reverse

Getting Setup

We will be using docker in this article, but feel free to install your database locally instead. Once you have docker installed, create a new file called docker-compose.yml and add the following.

version: '3'
 
services:
  db:
    image: mysql:latest
    container_name: db
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root_pass
      MYSQL_DATABASE: app_db
      MYSQL_USER: db_user
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: db_user_pass
    ports:
      - "6033:3306"
    volumes:
      - dbdata:/var/lib/mysql
  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    container_name: pma
    links:
      - db
    environment:
      PMA_HOST: db
      PMA_PORT: 3306
      PMA_ARBITRARY: 1
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8081:80

volumes:
  dbdata:

Next, run docker-compose up.

Now, navigate to http://localhost:8081/ to access phpMyAdmin. Then log in with the username root and pass root_pass.

Click the SQL tab and you are ready to go.

A Simple Example

The reverse function is pretty straight forward, we simply reverse any varchar type. Here is the example.

SELECT reverse('hello world') as res;