Question

Is it possible to rename a result in MySQL? For example if I have the following table

Pizza                     Topping 
--------------------------------
Cheese                    Olives 
Ham                       Tuna
Four cheese               Olives
Cheese                    Tuna

How can I do a select pizza so that cheese and four cheese are returned as the same? For example if i wanted to obtain a count of the different pizzas, I would get

Ham = 1
Cheese = 3

I want to perform a query such as

select pizza, count(*) from pizza_table
group by pizza

And the result should be:

Pizza                     count(*)
--------------------------------
Cheese                    3
Ham                       1

instead of

Pizza                     count(*)
--------------------------------
Cheese                    2
Ham                       1
Four cheese               1

Answer 1

Sure. Use the CASE/WHEN statement in your SELECT to evaluate and modify. See doc MySQL here. And some practical examples here to get you started.

This sample really naive but ought to be close:

SELECT 
   CASE Pizza
      WHEN 'Cheese' THEN 'Cheese'
      WHEN 'Four Cheese' THEN 'Cheese'
      WHEN 'Extra Cheese' THEN 'Cheese'
      ELSE Pizza
   END AS PizzaType,
   COUNT(*) as PCount
FROM PizzaTable
GROUP BY PizzaType

You should modify it to best fit your biz logic, such as using a LIKE statement.