Question

Up until today, this is the query that got everything I needed to know about a photo from my database:

SELECT 
    users.facebook_id, 
    users.first_name, 
    users.last_name, 
    photos.filename, 
    photos.description, 
    photos.finalist, 
    bookmarks.photo_id AS bookmark 
FROM `photos`, `users` 
LEFT JOIN bookmarks ON bookmarks.photo_id = 123 AND bookmarks.facebook_id = 123456789 
WHERE 
    users.facebook_id = photos.author AND 
    photos.id = 123 
LIMIT 1

However, now I’d like to also find out how many votes have been cast for this photo.

Here is my ‘votes’ table:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `votes` (
  `photo_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `facebook_id` bigint(20) NOT NULL COMMENT 'The user''s Facebook ID.',
  `date` varchar(10) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Date formatted as YYYY-MM-DD.',
  UNIQUE KEY `one_vote_per_day` (`photo_id`,`facebook_id`,`date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

And here is my attempt to modify my SQL query to fetch a vote count:

SELECT 
    users.facebook_id, 
    users.first_name, 
    users.last_name, 
    photos.filename, 
    photos.description, 
    photos.finalist, 
    bookmarks.photo_id AS bookmark,
    count(votes.*) AS vote_count
FROM `photos`, `users` 
LEFT JOIN votes ON votes.photo_id = 123  
LEFT JOIN bookmarks ON bookmarks.photo_id = 123 AND bookmarks.facebook_id = 123456789 
WHERE 
    users.facebook_id = photos.author AND 
    photos.id = 123 
LIMIT 1

The above attempt resulted in this error:

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '*) AS vote_count FROM `photos`, `users` LEFT JOIN votes ON votes.photo_id = 1' at line 9

Answer 1

The error was caused by a syntax problem. It was the asterix. This query performs properly and as desired:

SELECT 
    users.facebook_id, 
    users.first_name, 
    users.last_name, 
    photos.filename, 
    photos.description, 
    photos.finalist, 
    bookmarks.photo_id AS bookmark,
    count(votes.photo_id) AS vote_count
FROM `photos`, `users` 
LEFT JOIN votes ON votes.photo_id = 123  
LEFT JOIN bookmarks ON bookmarks.photo_id = 123 AND bookmarks.facebook_id = 123456789 
WHERE 
    users.facebook_id = photos.author AND 
    photos.id = 123 
LIMIT 1