Question

I have a table, matches, which contains sports fixture data with fields including home_pom (home player of the match) and away_pom. I need to call a query to find the top 5 values across those two fields (i.e. the 5 people with the most player of the match awards overall from season x), with the capacity to output the number of occurrences and the name of the player.

I have no real clue where to start with the SELECT function.

The matches table contains a league_id field which corresponds to a separate leagues table, called to $league_id earlier in the page. There’s currently no separate players table – I thought it would probably be redundant since this is pretty much the only thing I can consider it being relevant for.

i.e.

match_id | homepom | awaypom | league_id  
1        | Joe A   | Jane B  |  2  
2        | Joe F   | Jane G  |  2  
3        | Jane B  | Joe F   |  2  

to list Joe F and Jane B as having 2 pom awards, and Jane G and Joe A as having one.

$host="cust-mysql-123-05"; // Host name 
$username="unsn_637140_0003"; // Mysql username 
$password="mypw"; // Mysql password 
$db_name="nsnetballcouk_637140_db3"; // Database name

// Connect to server and select database.
mysql_connect("$host", "$username", "$password")or die("cannot connect"); 
mysql_select_db("$db_name")or die("cannot select DB");

$areatoleaguepom=$_GET['area'];
$seasontoleaguepom=$_GET['season'];
$divisiontoleaguepom=$_GET['division'];
$leaguepom_query=("SELECT league_id FROM leagues WHERE area_id='$areatoleaguepom' AND      season_id='$seasontoleaguepom' AND division_id='$divisiontoleaguepom'");
$leaguepom_result=mysql_query($leaguepom_query);
$leaguepom_row=mysql_fetch_array($leaguepom_result);
$leaguepom_id=$leaguepom_row['league_id'];

$toppom_query=(
"SELECT
player,
COUNT(player) as count
FROM (SELECT homepom AS player
FROM matches
WHERE league_id='$leaguepom_id'
UNION ALL
SELECT awaypom AS player
FROM matches
WHERE league_id='$leaguepom_id'
) as players
GROUP BY player
ORDER BY count DESC 
LIMIT 5
");

$toppom_result=mysql_query($toppom_query);
while ($toppom_row=mysql_fetch_array($toppom_result));

echo $toppom_row['player'] . " " . $toppom_row['count'] . "<br>";

any thoughts?

Answer 1

This might be a bit overcomplicated, but anyway…

SELECT
    player,
    COUNT(player) as count
FROM (
    SELECT homepom AS player
    FROM matches
    WHERE homepom IS NOT NULL AND homepom != '' AND league_id = xxx AND other_things
    UNION ALL
    SELECT awaypom AS player
    FROM matches
    WHERE awaypom IS NOT NULL AND awaypom != '' AND league_id = xxx AND other_things
) as players
GROUP BY player
ORDER BY count DESC 
LIMIT 5

You merge the home_pom and away_pom in one column, then do a group by to count who has the most.

Edit: removed the player table…