Question

If I have a table which looked something like

(`id`, `category`, `content`, `post_time`)

And I wanted to count the categories WHERE (for example) post_time > ‘1326600000’
I want the data to be displayed something like this:

categorys['cat_1'] = 4
categorys['cat_2'] = 2
categorys['cat_3'] = 1

The only way I can think of doing this is getting every row in MySQL.
Create a list of categories.
Then do a count(id) as cat_count WHERE category = ‘category_from_list’

Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Is there a better way?

Yes:

SELECT category,
       COUNT(1)
  FROM insert_table_name_here
 WHERE post_time > '1326600000'
 GROUP
    BY category
;

(MySQL actually makes the GROUP BY clause optional — if you select both category and COUNT(1), it will infer the GROUP BY clause — but you should include it anyway.)