How to Fix Invalid Use of Group Function Error

Sometimes while running SQL queries with GROUP BY clause in MySQL, you may get an error saying ‘Invalid Use of Group Function’. This is a common problem while using aggregation functions such as AVG(), SUM(), MAX(), MIN(), and others. In this article, we will learn how to fix invalid use of group function error in MySQL.

How to Fix Invalid Use of Group Function Error

Let us say you have MySQL table sales(id, order_datetime, amount)

mysql> create table sales(id int, order_datetime datetime, amount int);

mysql> insert into sales(id, order_datetime, amount) 
       values(1, '2022-01-01 10:30:30', 180),
(2, '2022-01-01 10:35:50', 100),
(3, '2022-01-01 11:50:30', 280),
(4, '2022-01-01 11:55:30', 150),
(5, '2022-01-01 12:30:30', 120),
(6, '2022-01-01 13:30:30', 100),
...

Let us say you run the following query. You will get the error mentioned below.

mysql> SELECT * FROM sales WHERE amount < AVG(amount);

ERROR 1111 (HY000): Invalid use of group function

You get this error because you used an aggregate function avg() in WHERE clause. You cannot use aggregate functions in WHERE clause. This is because WHERE clause is evaluated before the aggregate function and so MySQL tries to filter the rows using WHERE clause’s condition first. While evaluating the WHERE clause for each row MySQL tries to retrieve the value of aggregate function. Since it hasn’t been computed yet, this gives an error.

There are a couple of ways to fix this problem.

1. Using HAVING clause

Instead you need to use it in HAVING clause after GROUP BY clause. Aggregate functions are applied to each group and HAVING clause is used to filter these groups further as per user requirement.

mysql> SELECT id, date(order_datetime), AVG(amount) FROM sales GROUP BY date(order_datetime) HAVING AVG(amount) > 100;

The above query will calculate average sales amount for each group (day) and filter those groups where average>100.

2. Using Subquery

Another way to fix this problem by using a subquery, where we use aggregate function inside a subquery. Here is an example.

mysql> SELECT * FROM sales WHERE amount < (SELECT AVG(amount) FROM sales);

In the above query, the subquery is first evaluated to return the average value of amount column from sales table. Then the outer query is evaluated where each row’s amount value is compared with this average value and only those rows are returned where the amount < average.

In this article, we have learnt how to fix invalid use of group function. As mentioned earlier, this mainly happens because of misplaced aggregate function, used in a WHERE clause instead of HAVING clause.

How to Fix Invalid Use of Group Function Error