MySql PHP select count of distinct values from comma separated data (tags)

Question

How can I select the count of distinct values from data that is stored as comma separated values in MySql? I'll be using PHP to output the data from MySql in the end.

What's in there, are tags for each post. So in the end, I'm trying to output data just like the way stackoverflow does with it's tags, like this:

tag-name x 5

This is how the data in the table looks like (sorry about the content, but it's a site for recipes).

"postId"    "tags"                                  "category-code"
"1"         "pho,pork"                              "1"
"2"         "fried-rice,chicken"                    "1"
"3"         "fried-rice,pork"                       "1"
"4"         "chicken-calzone,chicken"               "1"
"5"         "fettuccine,chicken"                    "1"
"6"         "spaghetti,chicken"                     "1"
"7"         "spaghetti,chorizo"                     "1"
"8"         "spaghetti,meat-balls"                  "1"
"9"         "miso-soup"                             "1"
"10"        "chanko-nabe"                           "1"
"11"        "chicken-manchurian,chicken,manchurain" "1"
"12"        "pork-manchurian,pork,manchurain"       "1"
"13"        "sweet-and-sour-pork,pork"              "1"
"14"        "peking-duck,duck"                      "1"

Output

chicken             5 // occurs 5 time in the data above
pork                4 // occurs 4 time in the data above
spaghetti           3 // an so on
fried-rice          2
manchurian          2
pho                 1
chicken-calzone     1
fettuccine          1
chorizo             1
meat-balls          1
miso-soup           1
chanko-nabe         1
chicken-manchurian  1
pork-manchurian     1
sweet-n-sour-pork   1
peking-duck         1
duck                1

I'm attempting to select count of all distinct values in there, but since it's comma separated data, there appears to be no way to do this. select distinct will not work.

Can you think of a good way in either mysql or using php to get output like the way I've done?

Answer 1

I don't really know how to transform an horizontal list of comma-separated values to a list of rows without creating a table containing numbers, as many numbers as you may have comma-separated values. If you can create this table, here is my answer:

SELECT 
  SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(all_tags, ',', num), ',', -1) AS one_tag,
  COUNT(*) AS cnt
FROM (
  SELECT
    GROUP_CONCAT(tags separator ',') AS all_tags,
    LENGTH(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ',')) - LENGTH(REPLACE(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ','), ',', '')) + 1 AS count_tags
  FROM test
) t
JOIN numbers n
ON n.num <= t.count_tags
GROUP BY one_tag
ORDER BY cnt DESC;

Returns:

+---------------------+-----+
| one_tag             | cnt |
+---------------------+-----+
| chicken             |   5 |
| pork                |   4 |
| spaghetti           |   3 |
| fried-rice          |   2 |
| manchurain          |   2 |
| pho                 |   1 |
| chicken-calzone     |   1 |
| fettuccine          |   1 |
| chorizo             |   1 |
| meat-balls          |   1 |
| miso-soup           |   1 |
| chanko-nabe         |   1 |
| chicken-manchurian  |   1 |
| pork-manchurian     |   1 |
| sweet-and-sour-pork |   1 |
| peking-duck         |   1 |
| duck                |   1 |
+---------------------+-----+
17 rows in set (0.01 sec)

See sqlfiddle

---

Explaination

Scenario

1. We concatenate all tags using a comma to create only one list of tags instead of one per row
2. We count how many tags we have in our list
3. We find how we can get one value in this list
4. We find how we can get all values as distinct rows
5. We count tags grouped by their value

Context

Let's build your schema:

CREATE TABLE test (
    id INT PRIMARY KEY,
    tags VARCHAR(255)
);

INSERT INTO test VALUES
    ("1",         "pho,pork"),
    ("2",         "fried-rice,chicken"),
    ("3",         "fried-rice,pork"),
    ("4",         "chicken-calzone,chicken"),
    ("5",         "fettuccine,chicken"),
    ("6",         "spaghetti,chicken"),
    ("7",         "spaghetti,chorizo"),
    ("8",         "spaghetti,meat-balls"),
    ("9",         "miso-soup"),
    ("10",        "chanko-nabe"),
    ("11",        "chicken-manchurian,chicken,manchurain"),
    ("12",        "pork-manchurian,pork,manchurain"),
    ("13",        "sweet-and-sour-pork,pork"),
    ("14",        "peking-duck,duck");

Concatenate all list of tags

We will work with all tags in a single line, so we use GROUP_CONCAT to do the job:

SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ',') FROM test;

Returns all tags separated by a comma:

pho,pork,fried-rice,chicken,fried-rice,pork,chicken-calzone,chicken,fettuccine,chicken,spaghetti,chicken,spaghetti,chorizo,spaghetti,meat-balls,miso-soup,chanko-nabe,chicken-manchurian,chicken,manchurain,pork-manchurian,pork,manchurain,sweet-and-sour-pork,pork,peking-duck,duck

Count all tags

To count all tags, we get the length of the full list of tags, and we remove the length of the full list of tags after replacing the , by nothing. We add 1, as the separator is between two values.

SELECT LENGTH(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ',')) - LENGTH(REPLACE(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ','), ',', '')) + 1 AS count_tags
FROM test;

Returns:

+------------+
| count_tags |
+------------+
|         28 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Get the Nth tag in the tag list

We use the SUBSTRING_INDEX function to get

-- returns the string until the 2nd delimiter's occurrence from left to right: a,b
SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX('a,b,c', ',', 2);

-- return the string until the 1st delimiter, from right to left: c
SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX('a,b,c', ',', -1);

-- we need both to get: b (with 2 being the tag number)
SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX('a,b,c', ',', 2), ',', -1);

With such logic, to get the 3rd tag in our list, we use:

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ','), ',', 3), ',', -1)
FROM test;

Returns:

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ','), ',', 3), ',', -1) |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| fried-rice                                                                          |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Get all values as distinct rows

My idea is a little tricky:

1. I know we can create rows by joining tables
2. I need to get the Nth tag in the list using the request above

So we will create a table containing all numbers from 1 to the maximum number of tags you may have in your list. If you can have 1M values, create 1M entries from 1 to 1,000,000. For 100 tags, this will be:

CREATE TABLE numbers (
  num INT PRIMARY KEY
);

INSERT INTO numbers VALUES
    ( 1 ), ( 2 ), ( 3 ), ( 4 ), ( 5 ), ( 6 ), ( 7 ), ( 8 ), ( 9 ), ( 10 ), 
    ( 11 ), ( 12 ), ( 13 ), ( 14 ), ( 15 ), ( 16 ), ( 17 ), ( 18 ), ( 19 ), ( 20 ), 
    ( 21 ), ( 22 ), ( 23 ), ( 24 ), ( 25 ), ( 26 ), ( 27 ), ( 28 ), ( 29 ), ( 30 ), 
    ( 31 ), ( 32 ), ( 33 ), ( 34 ), ( 35 ), ( 36 ), ( 37 ), ( 38 ), ( 39 ), ( 40 ), 
    ( 41 ), ( 42 ), ( 43 ), ( 44 ), ( 45 ), ( 46 ), ( 47 ), ( 48 ), ( 49 ), ( 50 ), 
    ( 51 ), ( 52 ), ( 53 ), ( 54 ), ( 55 ), ( 56 ), ( 57 ), ( 58 ), ( 59 ), ( 60 ), 
    ( 61 ), ( 62 ), ( 63 ), ( 64 ), ( 65 ), ( 66 ), ( 67 ), ( 68 ), ( 69 ), ( 70 ), 
    ( 71 ), ( 72 ), ( 73 ), ( 74 ), ( 75 ), ( 76 ), ( 77 ), ( 78 ), ( 79 ), ( 80 ), 
    ( 81 ), ( 82 ), ( 83 ), ( 84 ), ( 85 ), ( 86 ), ( 87 ), ( 88 ), ( 89 ), ( 90 ), 
    ( 91 ), ( 92 ), ( 93 ), ( 94 ), ( 95 ), ( 96 ), ( 97 ), ( 98 ), ( 99 ), ( 100 );

Now, we get the numth (num being a row in number) using the following query:

SELECT n.num, SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(all_tags, ',', num), ',', -1) as one_tag
FROM (
  SELECT
    GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ',') AS all_tags,
    LENGTH(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ',')) - LENGTH(REPLACE(GROUP_CONCAT(tags SEPARATOR ','), ',', '')) + 1 AS count_tags
  FROM test
) t
JOIN numbers n
ON n.num <= t.count_tags

Returns:

+-----+---------------------+
| num | one_tag             |
+-----+---------------------+
|   1 | pho                 |
|   2 | pork                |
|   3 | fried-rice          |
|   4 | chicken             |
|   5 | fried-rice          |
|   6 | pork                |
|   7 | chicken-calzone     |
|   8 | chicken             |
|   9 | fettuccine          |
|  10 | chicken             |
|  11 | spaghetti           |
|  12 | chicken             |
|  13 | spaghetti           |
|  14 | chorizo             |
|  15 | spaghetti           |
|  16 | meat-balls          |
|  17 | miso-soup           |
|  18 | chanko-nabe         |
|  19 | chicken-manchurian  |
|  20 | chicken             |
|  21 | manchurain          |
|  22 | pork-manchurian     |
|  23 | pork                |
|  24 | manchurain          |
|  25 | sweet-and-sour-pork |
|  26 | pork                |
|  27 | peking-duck         |
|  28 | duck                |
+-----+---------------------+
28 rows in set (0.01 sec)

Count tags occurrences

As soon as we now have classic rows, we can easily count occurrences of each tags.

See the top of this answer to see the request.