MySQL SELECT most frequent by group
SELECT t1.*
FROM (SELECT tag, category, COUNT(*) AS count
FROM tags INNER JOIN stuff USING (id)
GROUP BY tag, category) t1
LEFT OUTER JOIN
(SELECT tag, category, COUNT(*) AS count
FROM tags INNER JOIN stuff USING (id)
GROUP BY tag, category) t2
ON (t1.tag = t2.tag AND (t1.count < t2.count
OR t1.count = t2.count AND t1.category < t2.category))
WHERE t2.tag IS NULL
ORDER BY t1.count DESC;
I agree this is kind of too much for a single SQL query. Any use of GROUP BY
inside a subquery makes me wince. You can make it look simpler by using views:
CREATE VIEW count_per_category AS
SELECT tag, category, COUNT(*) AS count
FROM tags INNER JOIN stuff USING (id)
GROUP BY tag, category;
SELECT t1.*
FROM count_per_category t1
LEFT OUTER JOIN count_per_category t2
ON (t1.tag = t2.tag AND (t1.count < t2.count
OR t1.count = t2.count AND t1.category < t2.category))
WHERE t2.tag IS NULL
ORDER BY t1.count DESC;
But it's basically doing the same work behind the scenes.
You comment that you could do a similar operation easily in application code. So why don't you do that? Do the simpler query to get the counts per category:
SELECT tag, category, COUNT(*) AS count
FROM tags INNER JOIN stuff USING (id)
GROUP BY tag, category;
And sort through the result in application code.
SELECT tag, category
FROM (
SELECT @tag <> tag AS _new,
@tag := tag AS tag,
category, COUNT(*) AS cnt
FROM (
SELECT @tag := ''
) vars,
stuff
GROUP BY
tag, category
ORDER BY
tag, cnt DESC
) q
WHERE _new
On your data, this returns the following:
'automotive', 8
'ba', 8
'bamboo', 8
'bananatree', 8
'bath', 9
Here's the test script:
CREATE TABLE stuff (tag VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL, category INT NOT NULL);
INSERT
INTO stuff
VALUES
('automotive',8),
('ba',8),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',10),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',9),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',10),
('bamboo',8),
('bamboo',9),
('bamboo',8),
('bananatree',8),
('bananatree',8),
('bananatree',8),
('bananatree',8),
('bath',9);
(Edit: forgot DESC in ORDER BYs)
Easy to do with a LIMIT in the subquery. Does MySQL still have the no-LIMIT-in-subqueries restriction? Below example is using PostgreSQL.
=> select tag, (select category from stuff z where z.tag = s.tag group by tag, category order by count(*) DESC limit 1) AS category, (select count(*) from stuff z where z.tag = s.tag group by tag, category order by count(*) DESC limit 1) AS num_items from stuff s group by tag;
tag | category | num_items
------------+----------+-----------
ba | 8 | 1
automotive | 8 | 1
bananatree | 8 | 4
bath | 9 | 1
bamboo | 8 | 9
(5 rows)
Third column is only necessary if you need the count.
This is for simpler situations:
SELECT action, COUNT(action) AS ActionCount
FROM log
GROUP BY action
ORDER BY ActionCount DESC;