Question

I would like to determine two things from a single query:

1. Most prevalent column in a table
2. The amount of times such column was located upon querying the table

Example Table:

user_id      some_field
1                data
2                data
1                data

The above would return user_id # 1 as being the most prevalent in the table, and it would return (2) for the total amount of times that it was located in the table.

I have done my research and I came across two types of queries.

1. GROUP BY user_id ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
2. SUM

The problem is that I can’t figure out how to use these two queries in conjunction with one another. For example, consider the following query which successfully returns the most prevalent column.

$top_user = "SELECT user_id FROM table_name GROUP BY user_id ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC";

The above query returns “1” based on the example table shown above. Now, I would like to be able to return “2” for the total amount of times the user_id (1) was found in the table.

Is this by any chance possible?

Thanks,

Evan

Answer 1

You can include count(*) in the SELECT list:

SELECT user_id, count(*) as totaltimes from table_name 
         GROUP BY user_id ORDER BY count(*) DESC;

If you want only the first one:

SELECT user_id, count(*) as totaltimes from table_name 
         GROUP BY user_id ORDER BY count(*) DESC LIMIT 1;