Search SQL for most common words - php

Question

I'm currently in the process of setting my first website implementing SQL.
I wish to use one of the columns from a table to identify the most commonly used word in the columns.
So, that is to say:
// TABLE = STUFF
// COLUMN0 = Hello there
// COLUMN1 = Hello I am Stuck
// COLUMN2 = Hi dude
// COLUMN3 = What's Up?
Therefore I wish to return a string of 'HELLO' as the most common word.
I should say I am using PHP and Dreamweaver to communicate with the SQL server, so I am placing the SQL query with in the relevant SQL line of a Recordset, with the result to be consequently placed on the site.
Any help would be great.
Thanks

Answer 1

You can calculate the most common words in PHP like this:
function extract_common_words($string, $stop_words, $max_count = 5) {
$string = preg_replace('/ss+/i', '', $string);
$string = trim($string); // trim the string
$string = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z -]/', '', $string); // only take alphabet characters, but keep the spaces and dashes too…
$string = strtolower($string); // make it lowercase
preg_match_all('/\b.*?\b/i', $string, $match_words);
$match_words = $match_words[0];
foreach ( $match_words as $key => $item ) {
if ( $item == '' || in_array(strtolower($item), $stop_words) || strlen($item) <= 3 ) {
unset($match_words[$key]);
}
}
$word_count = str_word_count( implode(" ", $match_words) , 1);
$frequency = array_count_values($word_count);
arsort($frequency);
//arsort($word_count_arr);
$keywords = array_slice($frequency, 0, $max_count);
return $keywords;
}