count rows where date is equal but separated by name - mysql

Question

I think it will be easiest to start with the table I have and the result I am aiming for.
Name | Date
A | 03/01/2012
A | 03/01/2012
B | 02/01/2012
A | 02/01/2012
B | 02/01/2012
A | 02/01/2012
B | 01/01/2012
B | 01/01/2012
A | 01/01/2012
I want the result of my query to be:
Name | 01/01/2012 | 02/01/2012 | 03/01/2012
A | 1 | 2 | 2
B | 2 | 2 | 0
So basically I want to count the number of rows that have the same date, but for each individual name. So a simple group by of dates won't do because it would merge the names together. And then I want to output a table that shows the counts for each individual date using php.
I've seen answers suggest something like this:
SELECT
NAME,
SUM(CASE WHEN GRADE = 1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS GRADE1,
SUM(CASE WHEN GRADE = 2 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS GRADE2,
SUM(CASE WHEN GRADE = 3 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS GRADE3
FROM Rodzaj
GROUP BY NAME
so I imagine there would be a way for me to tweak that but I was wondering if there is another way, or is that the most efficient?
I was perhaps thinking if the while loop were to output just one specific name and date each time along with the count, so the first result would be A,01/01/2012,1 then the next A,02/01/2012,2 - A,03/01/2012,3 - B,01/01/2012,2 etc. then perhaps that would be doable through a different technique but not sure if something like that is possible and if it would be efficient.
So I'm basically looking to see if anyone has any ideas that are a bit outside the box for this and how they would compare.
I hope I explained everything well enough and thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

You have to include two columns in your GROUP BY:
SELECT name, COUNT(*) AS count
FROM your_table
GROUP BY name, date
This will get the counts of each name -> date combination in row-format. Since you also wanted to include a 0 count if the name didn't have any rows on a certain date, you can use:
SELECT a.name,
b.date,
COUNT(c.name) AS date_count
FROM (SELECT DISTINCT name FROM your_table) a
CROSS JOIN (SELECT DISTINCT date FROM your_table) b
LEFT JOIN your_table c ON a.name = c.name AND
b.date = c.date
GROUP BY a.name,
b.date
SQLFiddle Demo

Answer 2

You're asking for a "pivot". Basically, it is what it is. The real problem with a pivot is that the column names must adapt to the data, which is impossible to do with SQL alone.
Here's how you do it:
SELECT
Name,
SUM(`Date` = '01/01/2012') AS `01/01/2012`,
SUM(`Date` = '02/01/2012') AS `02/01/2012`,
SUM(`Date` = '03/01/2012') AS `03/01/2012`
FROM mytable
GROUP BY Name
Note the cool way you can SUM() a condition in mysql, becasue in mysql true is 1 and false is 0, so summing a condition is equivalent to counting the number of times it's true.
It is not more efficient to use an inner group by first.

Answer 3

Just in case anyone is interested in what was the best method:
Zane's second suggestion was the slowest, I loaded in a third of the data I did for the other two and it took quite a while. Perhaps on smaller tables it would be more efficient, and although I am not working with a huge table roughly 28,000 rows was enough to create significant lag, with the between clause dropping the result to about 4000 rows.
Bohemian's answer gave me the least amount to code, I threw in a loop to create all the case statements and it worked with relative ease. The benefit of this method was the simplicity, besides creating the loop for the cases, the results come in without the need for any php tricks, just simple foreach to get all the columns. Recommended for those not confident with php.
However, I found Zane's first suggestion the quickest performing and despite the need for extra php coding it seems I will be sticking with this method. The disadvantage of this method is that it only gives the dates that actually have data, so creating a table with all the dates becomes a bit more complicated. What I did was create a variable that keeps track of what date it is supposed to be compared to the table column which is reset on each table row, when the result of the query is equal to that date it echoes the value otherwise it does a while loop echoing table cells with 0 until the dates do match. It also had to do a check to see if the 'Name' value is still the same and if not it would switch to the next row after filling in any missing cells with 0 to the end of that row. If anyone is interested in seeing the code you can message me.
Results of the two methods over 3 months of data (a column for each day so roughly 90 case statements) ~ 12,000 rows out of 28,000:Bohemian's Pivot - ~0.158s (highest seen ~0.36s)Zane's Double Group by - ~0.086s (highest seen ~0.15s)