Populate HTML table from MYSQL and counting rows - php

Question

I'm trying to populate a HTML table with mysql data, I have the following data in Mysql:
ID, IP, Referal
I want to create a table that shows a list of the referals and how often they occur, for example:
ID, IP, Referal
1 1.1.1.1 google.com
2 2.2.2.2 google.com
3 3.3.3.3 test.com
4 4.4.4.4 another.com
Should output:
google.com 2
test.com 1
another.com 1
What I've tried was this:
<table class="table table-bordered table-primary">
<tbody>
<?php
$sql="SELECT * FROM traffic";
$result=mysql_query($sql);
?>
<?php while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { ?>
<tr >
<td class="tc"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><?php if($row['referal']==''){
echo "Empty Referal";
} else { echo $row['referal']; }?></font></td>
<td class="tc"><center><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><?php $referal = $row['referal'];
$sql="SELECT COUNT(*) FROM traffic WHERE referal = $referal";
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
echo "$num_rows";
?></font></center></td>
</tr>
<?php } ?>
</tbody>
</table>
But that didn't count each refer individually, also it created a new table row for each entry even if the referal was the same.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You are probably looking for the GROUP BY keyword of SQL:
SELECT Referal, COUNT(*) FROM traffic GROUP BY Referal
This will give you exactly the table you want, without any additional for-loop in php

Answer 2

The thing is that you are gathering the amount of rows found in your last query and NOT your count query:
$sql="SELECT COUNT(*) FROM traffic WHERE referal = '$referal'";
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
First off, the COUNT command will return you a single row with a single column containing the count found. You should use the following:
$sql="SELECT COUNT(*) as count FROM traffic WHERE referal = '$referal'";
$numResult = mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query($sql));
$num_rows = $numResult['count'];
Also, it is VERY unneeded to put quotes around a variable you are echoing. This will suffice:
echo $num_rows; //NOT echo "$num_rows";
NOTICE: Do not use MySQL_* functions as they have been deprecated as of PHP 5.5. Use MySQLi_* or PDO instead.