3 Mysql Inner Joins with last join being the ORDER BY Clause - mysql

Question

I have 3 tables I'm trying to inner join (ambitious I know). The first query of the join, just basically queries my members table to pipe into the second query, which is the post table that actually holds the posts for those members (users search by member info to see their posts). The third and final query is simply ordering by the frequency of the most viewed posts. I have these two queries working separately:
$sql_string = "
SELECT m.id
, m.username
, m.gender
, p.*
FROM members m
JOIN posts p
ON p.member_id = m.id
WHERE m.active='y'
AND m.gender='M'
AND m.city='Los Angeles'
AND m.state='California'
AND p.active='y';
";
which accomplishes the first 2 queries and this final query:
$sql_string2 = "SELECT post_id FROM post_views GROUP BY post_id ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC";
Which accomplishes the final query. I just need to combine the 2, but when I do that:
$final_sql_string = "SELECT members.id, members.username, members.gender, posts.* FROM members INNER JOIN posts ON members.id = posts.member_id WHERE members.active='y' AND members.gender='M' AND members.city='Los Angeles' AND members.state='California' AND posts.active='y' INNER JOIN post_views ON posts.id = post_views.post_id GROUP BY post_views.post_id ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC";
I get an error:
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'INNER JOIN post_views ON posts.id = post_views.post_id GROUP BY post_views.post_' at line 1
Any ideas? Here are my tables for anyone interested:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `members` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`username` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`age` varchar(3) NOT NULL,
`gender` varchar(1) NOT NULL,
`city` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`state` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`active` enum('y','n') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'y',
`created_date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `posts` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`member_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`title` text NOT NULL,
`comments` enum('y','n') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'y',
`post_date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`list_weight` double NOT NULL,
`active` enum('y','n') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'y',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=47 ;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `post_views` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`post_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`member_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`post_date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=287 ;

Answer 1

The following should work:
SELECT m.id
, m.username
, m.gender
, p.*
, pc.post_count
FROM members m
JOIN posts p
ON p.member_id = m.id
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT post_id, COUNT(*) post_count FROM post_views GROUP BY post_id
) pc ON p.id = pc.post_id
WHERE m.active='y'
AND m.gender='M'
AND m.city='Los Angeles'
AND m.state='California'
AND p.active='y'
ORDER BY post_count DESC;
"join in" the counts you gathered and order by those.
If you want to keep your "style" you may use:
SELECT m.id
, m.username
, m.gender
, p.*
FROM members m
JOIN posts p
ON p.member_id = m.id
WHERE m.active='y'
AND m.gender='M'
AND m.city='Los Angeles'
AND m.state='California'
AND p.active='y'
ORDER BY (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM post_views WHERE post_id = p.id) DESC;