Question

I have a table with ~100,000 rows.

I am trying to print to screen the most frequently used “type_num” from a column.

So if 2362 appears 1000 times in the type_num column, that being the most used type, and 1234 is used 987 times and so on, I get a desc list of most freq used type_num‘s.

No luck. Here is my newbie attempt:

 my $mostused = DBI->connect("$thedb","$user","$password") or die "Connection Error: $DBI::errstr\n";

  my $getfreq = $mostused->prepare(qq{SELECT `type_num` count(*) FROM `productstable` GROUP BY `type_num` ORDER BY count(*) DESC LIMIT 10}); ##just tested with 10

    $getfreq->execute() or die "Connection Error: $DBI::errstr\n";

    while(my ($type_num) = $getfreq->fetchrow_array()) {
    print qq~$type_num<br />~;
    }

    $getfreq->finish(); #not sure if correct
    $mostused->disconnect;  #not sure if correct

Connection Error: You have an error in
your SQL syntax; check the manual that
corresponds to your MySQL server
version for the right syntax to use
near ‘count(*) FROM `productstable`
GROUP BY `type_id` ORDER BY count(*)
DESC LIMIT 10’ at line 1

The type_num’s are a 1 to 5 digit number. (Using DBI and strict but this example is cleaned up.)
I have tried several variations and examples I found while searching here but, I am doing something wrong. please help.

Answer 1

Change

SELECT `type_num` count(*) 
FROM `productstable` GROUP BY `type_num` 
ORDER BY count(*) DESC LIMIT 100

To

SELECT `type_num`, count(*) as cnt 
FROM `productstable` GROUP BY `type_num` 
ORDER BY cnt DESC LIMIT 100

Comma after type_num + alias for count(*) to reuse in the ORDER BY.