Question

I’m trying to select the x most “popular” records from a table where there are a number of duplicate entries. I’ve got so far as returning records based on the count of the duplicate fields, but I also need them in alphabetical order.

For example:

SELECT country, COUNT(*) TotalCount 
FROM destinations
GROUP BY country
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC 
LIMIT 4

This would return records as:

country – TotalCount
Mexico – 15
Cuba – 12
USA – 10
Australia – 5

How would I go about returning them ordered by country? I’ve tried changing the ORDER BY to the country field, but that then ignores the popularity, returning records with any number of duplicates.

Would a select within a select be the answer/possible?

Answer 1

Can’t mySQL just do this:

Select country
     , count(*)
  from theTable
 group by country
having count(*) > 1
 order by country