Question

I have a table in my MySQL database called Sponsors.
This table has a two field. event and names. The field names is filled with different words. For example Pieter, Sam, Thomas. I would like to count the number of names in names.

How can I do this using PHP and SQL-requests. I though something like this…

$query = mysql_result(mysql_query("SELECT names FROM Sponsors WHERE id = '55'"));
$result = str_replace(',',' ', $query);
$total = count($result);

But this didn’t solve it…

EDIT

if(!empty($activiteiten))
    {
        foreach($activiteiten as $k => $v) 
            {
                $query = mysql_result(mysql_query('SELECT aanwezig FROM tblLeidingAgenda WHERE id = "'.$v["id"].'"),0');
                $result = str_replace(", ", " ", $query);
                $total = str_word_count($result);

                echo '<div class="lof-main-item">';
                echo '<img src="images/791902news3.jpg" title="Newsflash 2" height="300" width="900">           
                            <div class="lof-main-item-desc">
                                <h3><a target="_parent" title="Newsflash 2" href="#">'.$v["uur"].'</a></h3>
                        <p>'.$v["titel"].'</p>
                        ID: '.$v["id"].'
                    <form method="post" action="#">
                        <input type="submit" name="aanwezig" value="Ik ben aanwezig"/><br />
                        <input type="submit" name="afwezig" value="Ik ben afwezig"/><br />
                        <input type="submit" name="herinnering" value="Stuur herinnering"/><br />
                        <input type="text" name="id" value="'.$v["id"].'" />
                        Ik ben aanwezig ('.$total.'): '.$v["aanwezig"].'<br />
                        Ik ben afwezig: '.$v["afwezig"].'</form></div></div> ';
            }
    }

Answer 1

Check the number of rows:

$total = mysql_num_rows($result);

PHP Manual (mysql_num_rows)

Or SELECT COUNT(*) in the first place.

Edit

Oh nevermind, it looks like you’re storing a comma separated list right in a single cell. That’s a bad practice btw. You probably just need another MySQL table to store them properly. If you decide not to fix database schemat though this should work for you:

$query = mysql_result(mysql_query("SELECT names FROM Sponsors WHERE id = '55'"));
$result = explode(',',$query);
$total = count($result);

PHP Manual (explode)