How to write complex recursive maria db query - recursion

Question

Im trying to write a recursive query for a use on a old and poorly designed database - and so the queries get quite complex.
Here is the (relevant) table relationships
Because people asked - here is the creation code for these tables:
CREATE TABLE CircuitLayout(
CircuitLayoutID int,
PRIMARY KEY (CircuitLayoutID)
);
CREATE TABLE LitCircuit (
LitCircuitID int,
CircuitLayoutID int,
PRIMARY KEY (LitCircuitID)
FOREIGN KEY (CircuitLayoutID) REFERENCES CircuitLayout(CircuitLayoutID)
);
CREATE TABLE CircuitLayoutItem(
CircuitLayoutItemID int,
CircuitLayoutID int,
TableName varchar(255),
TablePK int,
PRIMARY KEY (CircuitLayoutItemID)
FOREIGN KEY (CircuitLayoutID) REFERENCES CircuitLayout(CircuitLayoutID)
);
TableName refers to another table in the database and thus TablePK is a primary key from the specified table
One of the valid options for TableName is LitCircuit
I'm trying to write a query that will select a circuit and any circuit it is related to
I am having trouble understanding the syntax for recursive ctes
my non-functional attempt is this:
WITH RECURSIVE carries AS (
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID AS recurseList FROM LitCircuit
JOIN CircuitLayoutItem ON LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID = CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = "LitCircuit" AND CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK IN (00340)
UNION
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID AS CircuitIDs FROM LitCircuit
JOIN CircuitLayout ON LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID = CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = "LitCircuit" AND CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK IN (SELECT recurseList FROM carries)
)
SELECT * FROM carries;
the "00340" is a dummy number for testing, and it would get replaced with an actual list in usage
What i'm attempting to do is get a list of LitCircuitIDs based on one or many LitCircuitIDs - that's the anchor member, and that works fine.
What I want to do is take this result and feed it back into itself.
I lack an understanding of how to access data from the anchor member:
I don't know if it is a table with the columns from the select in the anchor or if it is simply a list of resulting values
I dont understand if or where I need to include "carries" in the FROM part of a query
If I were to write this function in python I would do it like this:
def get_circuits(circuit_list):
result_list = []
for layout_item_key, layout_item in CircuitLayoutItem.items():
if layout_item['TableName'] == "LitCircuit" and layout_item['TablePK'] in circuit_list:
layout = layout_item['CircuitLayoutID']
for circuit_key, circuit in LitCircuit.items():
if circuit["CircuitLayoutID"] == layout:
result_list.append(circuit_key)
result_list.extend(get_circuits(result_list))
return result_list
How do I express this in SQL?

Answer 1

danblack's comment made me realize something I was missing:
Here is what I was trying to do:
WITH RECURSIVE carries AS (
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID FROM LitCircuit
JOIN CircuitLayoutItem ON LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID = CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = 'LitCircuit' AND CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK IN (00340)
UNION ALL
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID FROM carries
JOIN CircuitLayoutItem ON carries.LitCircuitID = CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK
JOIN LitCircuit ON CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID = LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = 'LitCircuit'
)
SELECT DISTINCT LitCircuitID FROM carries;
I did not think of the CTE as a table to query against - rather just a result set, so I did not realize you have to SELECT from it - or in general treat it like a table.