[ resolved ] PHP Count top 3

[CanMan2004]

Hi all

I have a sql table which looks like

ID    NAME
1    Dave
2    John
3    Dave
4    Sarah
5    Sarah
6    John
7    Sarah
8    Dave
9    Henry
10    Sarah

As you will notice

Sarah is listed 4 times
Dave is listed 3 times
John is listed 2 times
Henry is listed 1 time

As im adding to this list, what I want to do is to display the top 3 most popular names, by doing a query which would return the most popular to the least popular but just showing the top 3.
The result would look something like

Sarah - 4
Dave  - 3
John  -  2

I use the following query

[code]$sql = "SELECT * FROM people";[/code]

But I cant figure out how to tweak it to do the above. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance

Dave

[SharkBait]

[code]
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM people GROUP BY name ORDER BY COUNT(*) LIMIT 3
[/code]

Try that?

[CanMan2004]

I get the error

Invalid use of group function

[trq]

Assuming the field holding the user names is called [i]username[/i].

[code]
SELECT username, COUNT(username) AS cnt FROM people GROUP BY username ORDER BY cnt DESC LIMIT 3;
[/code]

[CanMan2004]

thanks very much