get followers twitter like using MySQL

Question

hello lets say i have an example

my follow table

A B
1 2 // same so its friend
2 1 // same so its a friend
1 3 // user 1 is following 3
1 4 // user 1         


        

Answer 1

This should do it:

SELECT COUNT(me.A) FROM social AS me 
   INNER JOIN social AS you ON me.B = you.A 
WHERE me.A = you.B AND me.A = 1

Remove the COUNT if you want a list of friends.

EDIT

As requested, an explanation.

You're JOINing a table to itself because you're interested in the relationships between rows.

I decided to alias the tables as me and you to make the relationship clear. What that is saying is that column A can refer to me as the follower or you as the follower. Column B refers to the followee

If you were to rename the columns, the query would read more clearly

if A -> follower and B -> followee, we'd have:

SELECT COUNT(me.follower) FROM social AS me 
   INNER JOIN social AS you ON me.followee = you.follower
WHERE me.follower = you.followee AND me.follower = 1

So it's saying, take two copies of this table and JOIN the rows where the followee in me is the follower in you. Then, filter and show only the rows where the follower in me is the followee in you... there by capturing your desire to have (A == B) && (B == A)

Perhaps the table aliases aren't that great, but I hope that clarifies a little.

SECOND EDIT Per comments below, a clearer form may be:

SELECT COUNT(me.A) FROM social AS me 
   INNER JOIN social AS you ON me.A = you.B AND me.B = you.A
WHERE me.A = 1