Array sorting question

[shawjames]

Hello,
I have an array of numbers. I want to sort the array by the most occurances of the top 3 numbers in the entire array, and the first occurance in the case of a tie. Anyone have a slick way to do this?

So my array looks like this:
19213
14389
14388
19563
19213
2770
3143
3589
19213
19563
19785
19213
17684
19126
9106
19213
13819
1934
12245

So the result would be:
19213
19563
14389

Any ideas?

[thorpe]

where is this array comming from. if its a db, this would be so much more efficient in sql.

[shawjames]

The array comes from sql. It is in my shopping cart code. So:

$s = select oNum from db_carts where pNum='XYZ123'
//Gives a list of oNum that XYZ123 is a part of.
while ($s = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
$olist = select oNum from db_carts where pNum='XYZ123'
//Gives a list of other pNums that have the same oNum
while($items = mysql_fetch_array($olist))
print "$items[pID]<br>";//Creates list
}

Basically, I am trying to compile the top 3 other parts that have been purchased with the given part.

[Weedpacket]

Read up in your database program's documentation on SQL; you want to look at using GROUP BY, COUNT and LIMIT in your query.

[shawjames]

I understand the fundamentals of GROUP, COUNT and LIMIT. I am not sure how to streamline what I am doing with SQL. So i am going to try to do this with PHP... but I would much rather do it with a simple SQL query.

Any ideas?

[robert_w_ark]

do an ORDER BY <number> DESC <- or something similar 🙂