Question

I’m querying a table to find the most common string in a column. However, it doens’t seem to be working correctly. It should be returning the value of the most common string, but is instead returning the number of times the most common string exists. The query is:

SELECT COUNT(field_review_bar_tab_2_value) AS `Rows`
FROM (field_data_field_review_bar_tab_2)
GROUP BY (field_review_bar_tab_2_value)
ORDER BY `Rows` DESC
LIMIT 1

Table structure, simplified, would be something to the effect of:

 -----------------------------------
| ID | field_review_bar_tab_2_value |
|----+----------------------------- |
| 1  | Food Drinks                  |
| 2  | Drinks                       |
| 3  | Food Drinks                  |
| 4  | Food                         |
 -----------------------------------

The query is recognizing that, in the example above, “Food Drinks” is the most common string in the column. But, the query is returning “2” instead of “Food Drinks”. Any ideas as to why it would be making the correct query but returning the count of the result instead of the value of the string?

Answer 1

You need to include field_review_bar_tab_2_value in the SELECT list as well. I’ve switched the aggregate to COUNT(*) here, and included the grouped column in the SELECT.

SELECT 
 field_review_bar_tab_2_value AS the_most_common_string,
 COUNT(*) AS `Rows`
FROM (field_data_field_review_bar_tab_2)
GROUP BY (field_review_bar_tab_2_value)
ORDER BY `Rows` DESC
LIMIT 1