group_by_expr?

[philoye]

I found a need for a group_by_expr because backticking of the column names was getting in the way. I wanted to do something like:

   ->group_by_expr("FROM_UNIXTIME(`time`, '%Y-%m')")

A super simple patch. Not sure whether it would be of interest to you:

    /**
    * Add an unquoted expression to the list of columns to GROUP BY 
    */
    public function group_by_expr($expr) {
          $this->_group_by[] = $expr;
          return $this;
    }

[philoye]

Well, I'm an idiot. It turns out I don't actually need the above method because I can just do:

   ->select_expr("FROM_UNIXTIME(`time`, '%Y-%m')", 'month')
   ->group_by('month')

Maybe the above patch could be useful to someone, but that person is not me at the moment.

Cheers,
p.

[treffynnon]

The alias route is the best way to proceed with this, but I think it doesn't hurt to also support this with the patch as well.