Question

I’d like to get some sort of Top Ten list from a table a MySQL database.
Here’s an example. Let’s say I have this table:

ID  Username    Town
 1  foo         Munich
 2  bar         Kolding
 3  herp        Bordeaux
 4  derp        Bordeaux
 5  test        Cologne
 6  bla         Munich
 7  blob        Bordeaux

And now, I’d like to get the most common entries in ‘Town’, like this:

Bordeaux  3
Munich    2
Cologne   1
Kolding   1

What kind of query can do that?

Answer 1

How about this.

SELECT Town, Count(1) as TownCount 
FROM myTable 
GROUP BY Town
ORDER BY TownCount DESC;

If you want only 10 records, use

SELECT Town, Count(1) as TownCount 
FROM myTable 
GROUP BY Town
ORDER BY TownCount DESC
LIMIT 10;