Question

I’ve quote a simple database collecting simple information. There is a high chance of creating identical entries.

$sql = "INSERT INTO track_table (sitename, affiliate, refferal) values ('$sitename', '$affiliate', '$refferal')";

on a separate page, I pull a report

$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT sitename, affiliate, refferal FROM track_table") 
    or die("Problem executing query.");
    print "<table border=1>\n";
    print "<tr><td><b>SITENAME</b></td><td><b>AFFILIATE</b></td><td><b>REFFERAL</b></td></tr>";
    while ($row = $result->fetch_array()) {
        echo "<td>", $row['sitename'], "</td><td>", $row['affiliate'], "</td><td>", $row['refferal'], "</td></tr>\n"; 
    }
echo "</table>\n";

This outputs

SITENAME ------------ AFFILIATE ------------- REFFERAL

foo.com ---------------12345------------------bar.com

foo.com ---------------12345------------------bar.com

abc.com ---------------98765------------------xyz.com

as you can see, I can have 2 identical entries. Is there a way I can calculate 1 and 2 being the exact same, so not showing them, but perhaps in a new col that shows (2)

SITENAME ------------ AFFILIATE ------------- REFFERAL-------COUNT

foo.com ---------------12345------------------bar.com---------(2)

abc.com ---------------98765------------------xyz.com---------(1)

Answer 1

Use GROUP BY:

SELECT sitename, affiliate, refferal, COUNT(*) AS cnt
FROM track_table
GROUP BY sitename, affiliate, refferal

If you don’t need the count column then you could use SELECT DISTINCT instead:

SELECT DISTINCT sitename, affiliate, refferal
FROM track_table