Mysql Limit column value repetition N times

Question

I have two tables

Customer (idCustomer, ecc.. ecc..)
Comment (idCustomer, idComment, ecc.. ecc..)

obviously the two table are joined together, for example

SELECT * FROM Comment AS co
  JOIN Customer AS cu ON cu.idCustomer = co.idCustomer

With this I select all comment from that table associated with is Customer, but now I wanna limit the number of Comment by 2 max Comment per Customer.

The first thing I see is to use GROUP BY cu.idCustomer but it limits only 1 Comment per Customer, but I wanna 2 Comment per Customer.

How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

One option in MySQL is server-side variables. For example:

set @num := 0, @customer := -1;

select  *
from    (
        select  idCustomer
        ,       commentText
        ,       @num := if(@customer = idCustomer, @num + 1, 1) 
                    as row_number
        ,       @customer := idCustomer
        from    Comments
        order by 
                idCustomer, PostDate desc
        ) as co
join    Customer cu
on      co.idCustomer = cu.idCustomer
where   co.row_number <= 2