Question

How can I get a count of all records that match a LIKE query using COUNT?

I have a table keywords defined as

+------+-------+-----------------+
| id   | photo | keyword         |
+------+-------+-----------------+
| 3504 |   664 | 2013            |
| 3505 |   664 | bl elfring      |
| 3506 |   664 | indoor track    |
| 3507 |   664 | people          |
| 3508 |   664 | 1-5_it_0128.jpg |
+------+-------+-----------------+

and photo defined in part as

+-----+-------------------+-------------+--------------+------------+
| ID  | name              | photo_width | photo_height | date_taken |
+-----+-------------------+-------------+--------------+------------+
| 760 | 12-8_mbb_0072.jpg |         425 |          600 | 2012-12-08 |
| 759 | 12-8_mbb_0071.jpg |         459 |          600 | 2012-12-08 |
| 758 | 12-8_mbb_0069.jpg |         457 |          600 | 2012-12-08 |
| 757 | 12-8_mbb_0057.jpg |         395 |          600 | 2012-12-08 |
| 756 | 12-8_mbb_0050.jpg |         800 |          468 | 2012-12-08 |
+-----+-------------------+-------------+--------------+------------+

keywords.photo references photos.ID and keywords.keyword is an IPTC keyword associated with that image.

I’d like to get a count of all images associated with a particular keyword

So far,

SELECT COUNT(keywords.photo) AS keyword_count, keywords.keyword 
FROM keywords INNER JOIN photos ON keywords.photo = photos.ID
WHERE keywords.keyword LIKE '%nic%'

returns

+---------------+-------------+
| keyword_count | keyword     |
+---------------+-------------+
|            31 | nicole **** |
+---------------+-------------+

However,

SELECT DISTINCT keyword
FROM keywords
WHERE keyword LIKE '%nic%'

returns

+----------------+
| keyword        |
+----------------+
| nicole ****    |
| nicole ******* |
| bonny **nic*   |
| nicole ******  |
+----------------+

How can I get a count field with the results of the second query?

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you want the number of photos that match a given keyword? If this is the case, you can use the GROUP BY clause:

SELECT
    COUNT(keywords.photo) AS keyword_count, keywords.keyword 
FROM
    keywords INNER JOIN photos ON keywords.photo = photos.ID
WHERE
    keywords.keyword LIKE '%nic%'
GROUP BY
    keywords.keyword

This will group the results by the keywords.keyword column with a total count of how-many times each one is used. Please note that the “keywords” that are matched/grouped this way are unique – it will not group by partial matches (i.e. "bonny **nic* is different than nicole ******).