Question

I have this mysql code that retrieves the most popular descriptions in each category by how many times they appear in the database –

It grab’s the list however it echo’s out the data like this

"Adidas was the most popular in category 5 with 1 occurrences"

My table structure for this interests (hobbies) is

 # interests
 CREATE TABLE `interests` (
 `interestID` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
 `name` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
 `categoryID` int(11) NOT NULL,
 `sessionID` int(11) NOT NULL,
 `interest_desc` varchar(30) NOT NULL,
 `timestamp` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
 PRIMARY KEY (`interestID`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=9 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8   


# categories
CREATE TABLE `categories` (
 `categoryID` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
 `category_desc` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
 PRIMARY KEY (`categoryID`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=2 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

This is my SQL command:

SELECT 
   interest_desc, 
   categoryID, 
   MAX(num_in_cat) AS num_in_cat,
   category_name
FROM
(
   SELECT interest_desc, categoryID, COUNT(categoryID) AS num_in_cat
   FROM interests
   GROUP BY interest_desc, categoryID
) subsel
JOIN categories ON subsel.categoryID = categories.ID 
GROUP BY interest_desc, categoryID, category_name

I’m receiving this error:

Not unique table/alias: ‘categories’

Answer 1

An inner join against your categories table (you supply the correct table and column names) is all you need to complete this:

SELECT 
  interest_desc, 
  categoryID, 
  MAX(num_in_cat) AS num_in_cat,
  category_name
FROM
(
   SELECT interest_desc, categoryID, COUNT(categoryID) AS num_in_cat
   FROM interests
   GROUP BY interest_desc, categoryID
) subsel
JOIN categories ON subsel.categoryID = categories.ID 
GROUP BY interest_desc, categoryID, category_name