Question

I have a large mysql table with parent-child relationships stored in the nested set model (Left and right values).

It makes it EASY to find all the children of a given item.

Now, how do I find the DEPTH of a certain item.

Example of the row:

Parent_ID, Taxon_ID, Taxon_Name, lft, rgt

for somerow(taxon_id) I want to know how far it is from the root node.

NOW it may be important here to note that in the way I have the data structured is that each terminal node (a node with no children of its own) lft = rgt. I know many of the examples posted online have rgt = lft +1, but we decided not to do that just for sake of ease.

Summary:
Nested set model, need to find the depth (number of nodes to get to the root) of a given node.

Answer 1

I figured it out.

Essentially you have to query all the nodes that contain the node you are looking for inside. So for example, I was looking at one node that has lft=rgt=7330 and I wanted the depth of it. I just needed to

Select count(*) 
 from table 
 where lft<7330 
 AND   rgt>7330

You may want to add 1 to the result before you use it because its really telling you the number of generations preceding rather than the actual level. But it works and its fast!