Best Way To Count Records By Field

[tail]

I have a table with a field named "categories". What would be the best way to count all of the records with a certain category? Should I use COUNT for each category or is there a better solution so I don't query the database so many times?

 

Ex:

id        name        category

1        sample        cat1

2        sample2      cat2

3        sample3      cat1

4        sample4      cat1

5        sample5      cat2

 

 

Result:

Cat1: 3

Cat2: 2

[trq]

SELECT COUNT(name) as cnt FROM tbl GROUP BY category;