Question

I have the following queries –

SELECT COUNT(capture_id) as count_captures 
  FROM captures 
 WHERE user_id = 9

…returns 5

SELECT COUNT(id) as count_items 
  FROM items 
 WHERE creator_user_id = 9

…returns 22

I tried the following query –

   SELECT COUNT(capture_id) as count_captures, 
          COUNT(items.id) as count_items 
     FROM captures 
LEFT JOIN items ON captures.user_id = items.creator_user_id 
    WHERE user_id = 9

…but it returns two columns both with 110 as the value. I would want 5 in one column and 22 in the other. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

My knee-jerk is a subquery:

select count(capture_id) as count_captures, 
    (select count(id) as count_items
         from items i where i.creator_user_id = captures.user_id) as count_items 
from captures 
where user_id = 9

I’m not really sure what you can do to avoid this. You’re seeing expected (and generally desired behavior).

Of course, if you know that the ID’s in both won’t repeat themselves, you can use distinct:

SELECT COUNT( DISTINCT capture_id) as count_captures, 
      COUNT( DISTINCT items.id) as count_items 
FROM captures 
LEFT JOIN items ON captures.user_id = items.creator_user_id 
    WHERE user_id = 9