Question

My table is a messaging table basically. I have the following fields:

id: integer, sender_id: integer, receiver_id: integer, message: text

what i want to do is get the COUNT of rows of messages for each pair of sender and receiver.

Say for example:

• user ID 10 sent 3 messages to user 12.
• user 12 sent 2 messages to user 10
• user 3 sent 1 message to user 4
• user 4 sent 1 message to user 3

I want the result to show the number of messages exchanged between 10 and 12, in this case, there should be 5.

Likewise for users 3 and 4, should show that they have exchanged 2 messages.

All in one query if possible.

I hope I make sense.

Answer 1

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tablename WHERE sender_id IN (10,12) AND receiver_id IN (10,12)

However that will count any messages they have sent to them self. For example 10->10. So to be exact:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tablename 
WHERE (sender_id = 10 AND receiver_id = 12) 
OR (sender_id = 12 AND receiver_id = 10)