Question

How can I order my query by word count? Is it possible?

I have some rows in table, with text fields. I want to order them by word count of these text fields.

Second problem is, that I need to select only these rows, which have for example minimum 10 words, or maximum 20.

Answer 1

Well, this will not perform very well since string calculations need to be performed for all rows:

You can count number of words in a MySQL column like so: SELECT SUM( LENGTH(name) - LENGTH(REPLACE(name, ' ', ''))+1) FROM table (provided that words are defined as “whatever-delimited-by-a-whitespace”)

Now, add this to your query:

SELECT
    <fields>
FROM
    <table>
WHERE
    <condition>
ORDER BY SUM(LENGTH(<fieldWithWords>) - LENGTH(REPLACE(<fieldWithWords>, ' ', '')) + 1)

Or, add it to the condition:

SELECT
    <fields>
FROM
    <table>
WHERE
    SUM(LENGTH(<fieldWithWords>) - LENGTH(REPLACE(<fieldWithWords>, ' ', '')) + 1) BETWEEN 10 AND 20
ORDER BY <something>