Question

I have a table with a field (cat_tags) which contain the following rows:-

    id - cat_tags - date_added
    1 -   yam, potato, onion, pepper,beans - 23-12-2011
    row1 - yam, potato, onion, pepper  23-12-2011
    row2 - onion, pepper, beans - 23-12-2011
    row3 - pepper, beans, rice - 23-12-2011
    row4 - rice, potato, pepper, yam -  23-12-2011
    row5 - beans, rice, onion, food -  23-12-2011
    .....
    .....
    .....

pls how can I get a DISTINCT list of items and the number of times(frequency) they occurred in the entire table field?

Eg. pepper x 4
onion x 3
yam x 2

thank you in advance

Answer 1

If I have understood your question correctly, this should work:

    $result = mysql_query("SELECT cat_tags FROM table");

    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
    {
        //Split the row into an array based on the comma
        $detail_array = explode(",", $row['cat_tags']);

        //Go through that array and index a master count for each occurence of the same value 
        //Trim due to the spaces after the comma in your field
        foreach($detail_array as $key=>$val)
        {
            $output_array[trim($val)] = $output_array[trim($val)] + 1;  
        }   
    }

    print_r($output_array);