get count of posts based on count(*) - php

Question

i am trying to get number of posts that i have
Here is my query
$Query="
SELECT t.*,u.*,c.*
FROM posts as t
LEFT JOIN relations as r on r.post_id = t.post_id
LEFT JOIN users as u on t.auther_id = u.auther_id
LEFT JOIN categories as c on c.cate_id = r.cate_id
GROUP BY t.post_id
";
$Query=mysql_query($Query);
$numberOfPosts=mysql_num_rows($Query);
This query is works very well
but i am trying to convert it, i want make it faster
i want use count(*) instead of t.*
because when i use t.*, it gets the full data of posts and categories
but i want to get count only, So i decided to use count(*) but i don't know how to use it with query like this
Edit
i've replaced SELECT t.*,u.*,c.* with SELECT count(t.*)
But i got mysql Error Warning: mysql_fetch_assoc(): supplied argument
Edit 2:
i am trying SELECT count(t.post_title)
I Got this results
Array ( [count(t.post_id)] => 10 )
But i have only 2 posts!

Answer 1

$Query="
SELECT t.*,u.*,c.*
FROM posts as t
LEFT JOIN relations as r on r.post_id = t.post_id
LEFT JOIN users as u on t.auther_id = u.auther_id
LEFT JOIN categories as c on c.cate_id = r.cate_id
GROUP BY t.post_id
";
$Query=mysql_query($Query);
$numberOfPosts=mysql_num_rows($Query);
Let's take a step back and analyze this query for a moment.
You're selecting everything from three out of four tables used in the query. The joins create some logic to limit what you select to the proper categories, authors, etc. At the end of the day you are getting a lot of data from the database, then in PHP simply asking it how many rows were returned (mysql_num_rows). Instead, what #Dagon is trying to suggest in comments, is that you have MySQL simply count the results, and return that.
Let's refactor your query:
$query = "
SELECT COUNT(t.post_id) AS qty
FROM posts as t
LEFT JOIN relations AS r ON r.post_id = t.post_id
LEFT JOIN users AS u ON t.auther_id = u.auther_id
LEFT JOIN categories AS c ON c.cate_id = r.cate_id
GROUP BY t.post_id
";
$result = mysql_query($query);
$result_row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
$numberOfPosts = $result_row['qty'];
(You could also use Barattlo's custom execute_scalar function to make it more readable.)
I would need to see your table structures to be of more help on how to optimize the query and get the desired results.

Answer 2

try doing this:
$Query="
SELECT count(t.*) as count_all
FROM posts as t
LEFT JOIN relations as r on r.post_id = t.post_id
LEFT JOIN users as u on t.auther_id = u.auther_id
LEFT JOIN categories as c on c.cate_id = r.cate_id
GROUP BY t.post_id
";
$Query=mysql_query($Query);
$numberOfPosts=mysql_num_rows($Query);

Answer 3

You want to do
SELECT count(t.id) AS count FROM ....
//do query with PDO or whatever you are using
$rows = mysql_fetch_assoc();
$num_rows = $rows['count'];

Answer 4

You should probably simply use
SELECT count(*) as postingcount FROM posts
Why?
Because you do not have a WHERE clause, so there are no restrictions. Your JOINS do not ADD more rows to the resultset, and in the end your GROUP BY merges every duplicate occurance of a post_id that might have occurred because of joining back into one row. The result should only be counted, so assuming that the real number you want to know is the number of data sets inside the table posts, you do not need any join, and doing count(*) really is a very fast operation on tables in MySQL.
Remember to check if mysql_query returns false, because then you have to check mysql_error() and see why your query has an error.