need help building a php and mysql query

[cruz610]

This is basically what I want to do:
I want to count the number of times a username is displayed when I do

SELECT starter FROM threads WHERE starterid!=0 AND boardid IN (4, 6, 7, 9, 36, 37, 38, 40, 49, 60)

After that, I then want to sort it based on the amount of instances of the username
i.e it would be displayed (on a php page 😉)
name----|number
-----------|---------
lala--------| 83-----
lala1-------| 81----
lala2-------| 78----
How would I begin trying to do this? Sorry, I am a newbie 🙁
Thanks 😃

[matt_4013]

SELECT starter, COUNT(starterid) AS count FROM threads WHERE starterid <> 0 AND boardid IN ('1','2','3') GROUP BY starterid ORDER BY count DESC

[cruz610]

perfect! 😃
now how would I output that to a php page?

[matt_4013]

Well, it really depends on what you want to do with it. The basics of it are this:

	// Connect to your database server
	$db = mysql_connect("host", "username", "password") or die("Could not connect to server");
	// Select the database to use
	mysql_select_db("database", $db) or die("Could not select database!");

// Run your query (I split it up like this to make it easier to read)
$sql  = "SELECT starter, COUNT(starterid) AS count FROM threads ";
$sql .= "WHERE starterid <> 0 AND boardid IN ('1','2','3') ";
$sql .= "GROUP BY starterid ORDER BY count DESC";

$result = mysql_query($sql, $db) or die("Error! MySQL returned this: ".mysql_error());

// Now you need to loop through the results, because you never know how many there are going to be
// This will put each result row into the $row array
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {

	// Now we output the data we got
	echo $row['starter']." - ".$row['count']."<br />";
}

// And we're done!