counting field values

sgray

hey there,

how would I go about adding all the numbers of a particular field then assigning that value to a variable such as $total ?

Thanks,

Stew

Weedpacket

Depends on what you mean by "a field". A form field? A field in an array? A database field? A Galois field? A field of daisies?

examancer

if you are talking about a database feild, this is easy:

after you recieve a database query you must parse out the results row by row. With MySQL, what I use, this is done with the mysql_fetch_array() function, and a while or for loop if there is more than one row. Then, on each row you can add the value to a variable, ending up with the total. It would look something like this:

$sql = "SELECT points FROM users";
$q = mysql_query($sql);
$total = 0; // empty variable for total
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($q)) {
  $total = $total + $row['points'];
}
echo $total;

Weedpacket

Even easier than that if it's a database field.

$sql="SELECT SUM(points) AS total FROM users";
$total=mysql_result(mysql_query($q),0,'total');

sgray

yeah, I was talking about a databse field. sorry for not mentioning that before.

I tried:

$sql="SELECT SUM(points) AS total FROM cds";
$totalcds=mysql_result(mysql_query($q),0,'total');

where cds is the field which I asm wanting to count but I get the error 'Warning: mysql_result(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in index1.php'

any ideas?

vivianp79

Your sql statement is a little wrong.
Try this:

$sql="SELECT SUM(cds) AS total FROM tablename";
$totalcds=mysql_result(mysql_query($sql),0,'total');

Define "tablename" to be the table that the database field "cds" comes from.

This should work. If it doesnt - OOPS!

-vivianp