MySQL: group by consecutive days and count groups

Question

I have a database table which holds each user\'s checkins in cities. I need to know how many days a user has been in a city, and then, how many visits a user has made to a c

Answer 1

Try to apply this code to your task -

CREATE TABLE visits(
  user_id INT(11) NOT NULL,
  dt DATETIME DEFAULT NULL
);

INSERT INTO visits VALUES 
  (1, '2011-06-30 12:11:46'),
  (1, '2011-07-01 13:16:34'),
  (1, '2011-07-01 15:22:45'),
  (1, '2011-07-01 22:35:00'),
  (1, '2011-07-02 13:45:12'),
  (1, '2011-08-01 00:11:45'),
  (1, '2011-08-05 17:14:34'),
  (1, '2011-08-05 18:11:46'),
  (1, '2011-08-06 20:22:12'),
  (2, '2011-08-30 16:13:34'),
  (2, '2011-08-31 16:13:41');


SET @i = 0;
SET @last_dt = NULL;
SET @last_user = NULL;

SELECT v.user_id,
  COUNT(DISTINCT(DATE(dt))) number_of_days,
  MAX(days) number_of_visits
FROM
  (SELECT user_id, dt
        @i := IF(@last_user IS NULL OR @last_user <> user_id, 1, IF(@last_dt IS NULL OR (DATE(dt) - INTERVAL 1 DAY) > DATE(@last_dt), @i + 1, @i)) AS days,
        @last_dt := DATE(dt),
        @last_user := user_id
   FROM
     visits
   ORDER BY
     user_id, dt
  ) v
GROUP BY
  v.user_id;

----------------
Output:

+---------+----------------+------------------+
| user_id | number_of_days | number_of_visits |
+---------+----------------+------------------+
|       1 |              6 |                3 |
|       2 |              2 |                1 |
+---------+----------------+------------------+

---

Explanation:

To understand how it works let's check the subquery, here it is.

SET @i = 0;
SET @last_dt = NULL;
SET @last_user = NULL;


SELECT user_id, dt,
        @i := IF(@last_user IS NULL OR @last_user <> user_id, 1, IF(@last_dt IS NULL OR (DATE(dt) - INTERVAL 1 DAY) > DATE(@last_dt), @i + 1, @i)) AS 

days,
        @last_dt := DATE(dt) lt,
        @last_user := user_id lu
FROM
  visits
ORDER BY
  user_id, dt;

As you see the query returns all rows and performs ranking for the number of visits. This is known ranking method based on variables, note that rows are ordered by user and date fields. This query calculates user visits, and outputs next data set where days column provides rank for the number of visits -

+---------+---------------------+------+------------+----+
| user_id | dt                  | days | lt         | lu |
+---------+---------------------+------+------------+----+
|       1 | 2011-06-30 12:11:46 |    1 | 2011-06-30 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-07-01 13:16:34 |    1 | 2011-07-01 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-07-01 15:22:45 |    1 | 2011-07-01 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-07-01 22:35:00 |    1 | 2011-07-01 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-07-02 13:45:12 |    1 | 2011-07-02 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-08-01 00:11:45 |    2 | 2011-08-01 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-08-05 17:14:34 |    3 | 2011-08-05 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-08-05 18:11:46 |    3 | 2011-08-05 |  1 |
|       1 | 2011-08-06 20:22:12 |    3 | 2011-08-06 |  1 |
|       2 | 2011-08-30 16:13:34 |    1 | 2011-08-30 |  2 |
|       2 | 2011-08-31 16:13:41 |    1 | 2011-08-31 |  2 |
+---------+---------------------+------+------------+----+

Then we group this data set by user and use aggregate functions: 'COUNT(DISTINCT(DATE(dt)))' - counts the number of days 'MAX(days)' - the number of visits, it is a maximum value for the days field from our subquery.

That is all;)