Counting custom fields in PHP

[GrBear]

Sorry, I seem to have left my PHP books at the office, but I had a quick question that someone should hopefully be able to answer.

I'm writing a little stat hack for my members that will count the number of users of various interests that I'll display in my Site Stats row of the main forum page.

My stats will be generated off the custom "field5" (listed in the DB as "field5"), which is a pulldown that lists 5 or 6 options, and the member can pick one. I don't care about usernames, etc. I just want raw stats. This is example code of what I wanted to use, but I'm not sure about the array stuff. I want the text key for the array to match the text of the option in the pulldown, and increment it if there's a match from the database row from my select statement.


$field5stat = array();
$dbquery = $DB_site->query("SELECT field5 FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "userfield ASC");

while ($queryrow = $DB_site->fetch_array($dbquery))

{
$field5stat[$queryrow['field5']]++
}


What I'm hoping that last line does is say, if field5 is 'blue', then $field5stat['blue'] should be incremented.

Will that work, or is my syntax of either the array or incrementing wrong?

Thanks for any assistant, my PHP coding skills are rather rusty as I haven't programmed in it for about 4 years *laughs*

[sabret00the]

your best bet would be to scrap the way you done it in order of something alot simpler


$field5stat = array();
$dbquery = $DB_site->query("SELECT field5 FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "userfield ASC");

while ($queryrow = $DB_site->fetch_array($dbquery))

{
if ($queryrow[field5] == "blue")
{
$field5stat['bue']++
}
else if ($queryrow[field5] == "red")
{
$field5stat['red']++
}
}
then echo template to echo values


theirs propably parse errors but you seem competant enough to sort that out.

[GrBear]

your best bet would be to scrap the way you done it in order of something alot simpler


Other than one parse error, apparently my code worked. *laughs*

I get:

$field5stat[0] aka ['blue'] = 25
$field5stat[1] aka ['red'] = 5
...
$field5stat[7] aka ['orange'] = 10

count($field5stat) returns 8 (there are 8 indexes)

My problem now seems to be that I can't pull up the array values by the numerical key, only the textual key. I though arrays can have both the numerical AND textual key values. :disappointed:

Say I now wanted to loop through the array and spit out the textual key and the value (not the key#) to get a listing of something like:

blue 25
red 5
...
orange 10

I was trying to do a loop like:


for ($i == 0; $i < count($field5stat); $i++)

{
echo $field5stat[$i]; // echo just the value, not the key
}

I don't get anything back, which is why I'm guessing that you can't call back an array by both it's numerical index AND textual key name.

*sighs*

[Dean C]

SELECT COUNT(field5) AS total FROM userfield

Run that query and see if it's what you want? Little confused as to what you're doing here :)

[GrBear]

Run that query and see if it's what you want? Little confused as to what you're doing here :)

The select statement only returns the total of entries in the column.

I'll give an example of what I'm trying to do.

I have a custom field in the UCP, which one is "My favorite color is:" and there's a pull down of 8 options to choose from. (red, blue, green, etc..) This column is called field5.

I want to scan the column and display how many people like red, blue, green, etc.

The reason I didn't go with sabret00the's original suggestion was because then I'd have to change the code if I decided to add another option for the field (a new color).

Thanks for your suggestion though.

[sabret00the]

My problem now seems to be that I can't pull up the array values by the numerical key, only the textual key. I though arrays can have both the numerical AND textual key values.
you can only pull the numerical key values if they array is generated via a query to the best of my knowledge, according to your above code you're setting the array manually.

The reason I didn't go with sabret00the's original suggestion was because then I'd have to change the code if I decided to add another option for the field (a new color).you could actually acheive that on the fly, but i was just looking for the simplest answers.

[sabret00the]

$field5stat = array();
$cats = $DB_site->query("SELECT DISTINCT field5 FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "userfield ");
$dbquery = $DB_site->query("SELECT field5 FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "userfield ");



while ($queryrow = $DB_site->fetch_array($dbquery))

{
while ($queryrow[field5] = $cats)
{
$field5stat['field5']++
}
}
then echo template to echo values
i just woke up so i can't check the code but i think i done something like this in another script that came out looking a bit like this.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

What about a:
SELECT field5, COUNT(field5) FROM userfield GROUP BY field5;

wouldn't that do the trick?

[Andreas]

MarcoH64 is right, basically this query should do the work.

But i'd change it a bit to make the results easier to use:

SELECT field5, COUNT(field5) AS total FROM userfield GROUP BY field5

[Marco van Herwaarden]

sorry, yes you're right Kirby, should have added that. Bit easier to use on scripts :D

[GrBear]

Here's the solution I can up with that works.

$array = array();
$dbquery = $DB_site->query("SELECT field5 FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "userfield");

while ($queryrow = $DB_site->fetch_array($dbquery))
{
$array[$queryrow['field5']]++;
}
reset($array);
while (list($key, $val) = each($array))
{
$f5stat .= $val . " = " . $key;
}


Thanks for all the help folks, it was appreciated!

[rake]

Keep in mind, you'll be running through a table that can be a couple of thousand rows large, depending on the number of members on your board..

You should use the solution provided by MarcoH64

[GrBear]

Good point. It would make sense that it would be quicker for the DB engine to tabulate the totals rather than have PHP parse each row individually from the DB.

I'll give it a shot.

Thanks!

[GrBear]

I had to modify my the code of course for the new SELECT, and by tweaking the SQL statement further, I was able offload the sorting to the DB since I wanted the results displayed by the highest total to the lowest.


$dbquery = $DB_site->query("SELECT field5, COUNT(field5) AS total FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "userfield GROUP BY field5 ORDER BY total DESC");

while ($queryrow = $DB_site->fetch_array($dbquery))
{
$f5stat .= $queryrow['total'] . " " . $queryrow['field5'];
}

There was a bit of extra html layout code in there as well, but for easier readability I left it out. :)

Much simpler execution to the problem. Again, many thanks! :up:

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Sometimes the solution to something that seems complicated can be real simple. :D

[pshadow]

this was great. I tried to do the same thing and it works perfect. thanks.

I'm wondering how to make 2 edits though:
1. exclude counting and displaying the empty fields. currently shows 500 blank.
2. not really related but, it displays whats in the field5 fine, how do I get the original field number from the select menus of the custom field? i.e. the ID that is used in the search => getall&field5=3 rather than getall&field5=orange

[Andreas]

1) WHERE field5 != ''
2) SELECT data from profilefield WHERE profilefieldid=5;
Then unserialize data and use the value returned by the other query as an index into this array.

[pshadow]

thanks. first part worked perfect. I'm new to the whole query stuff so not sure what part 2 entails with the unserialize and using other query. I'll have to play around and with that one.

thanks for the quick response

[Andreas]

$field5 = $DB_site->query_first("SELECT data FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "profilefield WHERE profilefieldid = 5");
$fieldvalues = unserialize($field5['data']);

$dbquery = $DB_site->query("SELECT field5, COUNT(field5) AS total FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "userfield WHERE field5 != '' GROUP BY field5 ORDER BY total DESC");

while ($queryrow = $DB_site->fetch_array($dbquery))
{
$f5stat .= $queryrow['total'] . " " . $fieldvalues[$queryrow['field5']];
}

[pshadow]

hmm.. doesn't seem to return anything? no errors though? just count number and blank. nothing for the fieldvalues.