how to count rows by first letter?

Question

a noob question here!

I wrote this query, but the \"group by\" is very stupid... so, how can I correct this?

SELECT
    COUNT(*) AS total,
    \'x\'         


        

Answer 1

Let's dissect your query:

SELECT
    COUNT(*) AS total,
    'x' as test     <-- Why?
    FROM            <-- Bad formatting.
contents
    WHERE name LIKE 'C%'
GROUP BY
    test            <-- Removing 'x' and the whole GROUP BY has the same effect.
ORDER BY id ASC     <-- The result only contains one row - nothing to sort.

So the query that returns one row with one field, containing the number of rows whose name begins with 'C' would look like this:

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM contents
WHERE name LIKE 'C%'

Having an index whose leading edge is name would ensure good performance. To understand why, take a look at the Anatomy of an SQL Index.