Unconventional sorting of table elements using SQL in Qt - c++

Question

I'm creating a ticketing system and I want to populate a table for people to view all of the open tickets. I want them to be sorted by priority, from critical --> high --> medium --> low.
I'm reusing code from a test database program I made before, which ordered entries in a table by "last name."
while(currentRow < rows){
qry.prepare("SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY lastname LIMIT :f1, :f2");
qry.bindValue(":f1", currentRow);
qry.bindValue(":f2", currentRow+1);
qry.exec();
qry.next();
currentCol = 0;
//this loop will populate all columns in the current row
while(currentCol < ui->table->columnCount()){
QTableWidgetItem *setdes = new QTableWidgetItem;
setdes->setText(qry.value(currentCol).toString());
ui->table->setItem(count, currentCol-1, setdes);
currentCol++;
}
currentRow++;
}
Obviously I can't just change the query from lastname to priority, because they would be sorted alphabetically instead of the order that I want them to be sorted in. Is there a way I can execute an SQL query to sort them in the order I provided above, or am I going to have to populate the table and then sort it myself?

Answer 1

You can use a CASE WHEN ... THEN construct to map your strings to numeric values to sort on, e.g.
... ORDER BY CASE
WHEN priority='critical' THEN 1
WHEN priority='high' THEN 2
WHEN priority='medium' THEN 3
WHEN priority='low' THEN 4
ELSE 5
END