Counting Records in PHP

[stevesimo]

Hi, I have a table which contains categories.  These categories are output so the user can select which one they want to view.  What I want to do is count how many records there are for each category and output this next to the category name.  For example cars(5), bikes(3) etc.

 

Whilst I have my code working which outputs the category, I am not sure how to use the SQL count operator.  Can anyone offer any advice on the best way to achieve this.

 

Here is my code:

 

$query  = "Select * From Categories Order By categoryTitle";
$result = mysql_query($query);
echo '<table>';
  echo '<tr>';
    echo '<td width="150">';
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){//loop through dropdown row by row
      $categoryID     = $row['categoryID']; 
      $categoryTitle  = $row['categoryTitle']; 
      $count = $count + 1;
      echo "<a href='search.php?area=".$id."&category=".$categoryID."'>".$categoryTitle."</a><br>";
}//end of loop

[code]

thanks, Steve

[/code]

[huhn_m]

you can count the number of result lines of a MySQL Query with the folowing Syntax:

 

"SELECT COUNT(*) FROM my_table WHERE Category=cat_to_count"

 

(you can also replace the asteriks (*) with only one column name (like ID) but I'm not sure if it gets faster because of this.

[stevesimo]

Thanks for your help, I have got it working now.

 

Steve

 

[conker87]

$count++ does the same as your $count = $count + 1;

 

Just a heads up