Postgresql : Average over a limit of Date with group by - postgresql

Question

I have a table like this
item_id date number
1 2000-01-01 100
1 2003-03-08 50
1 2004-04-21 10
1 2004-12-11 10
1 2010-03-03 10
2 2000-06-29 1
2 2002-05-22 2
2 2002-07-06 3
2 2008-10-20 4
I'm trying to get the average for each uniq Item_id over the last 3 dates.
It's difficult because there are missing date in between so a range of hardcoded dates doesn't always work.
I expect a result like :
item_id MyAverage
1 10
2 3
I don't really know how to do this. Currently i manage to do it for one item but i have trouble extending it to multiples items :
SELECT AVG(MyAverage.number) FROM (
SELECT date,number
FROM item_list
where item_id = 1
ORDER BY date DESC limit 3
) as MyAverage;
My main problem is with generalising the "DESC limit 3" over a group by id.
attempt :
SELECT item_id,AVG(MyAverage.number)
FROM (
SELECT item_id,date,number
FROM item_list
ORDER BY date DESC limit 3) as MyAverage
GROUP BY item_id;
The limit is messing things up there.
I have made it " work " using between date and date but it's not working as i want because i need a limit and not an hardcoded date..
Can anybody help

Answer 1

You can use row_number() to assign 1 to 3 for the records with the last date for an ID an then filter for that.
SELECT x.item_id,
avg(x.number)
FROM (SELECT il.item_id,
il.number,
row_number() OVER (PARTITION BY il.item_id
ORDER BY il.date DESC) rn
FROM item_list il) x
WHERE x.rn BETWEEN 1 AND 3
GROUP BY x.item_id;