Counting how many MySQL fields in a row are filled (or empty)

Question

I need to put together a method that would allow me to quantify how many fields in a row have been filled by a user.

For example:

User    Name    Age             


        

Answer 1

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM `MyTable`');
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)){
    $empty_count = 0;
    $count = count($row);
    for($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++)
        if($row[$i] === '' || $row[$i] === 'NULL')
            $empty_count++;
    echo 'User '.$row[0].' = '.((int)(100*(1-$empty_count/($count-1)))).'% complete';
}

Answer 2

select 
    User,
    (
        case Name when '' then 0 else 1 end
        +
        case when Age is null then 0 else 1 end
        +
        case Country when '' then 0 else 1 end
        +
        case Gender when '' then 0 else 1 end
        +
        case when Height is null then 0 else 1 end
    ) * 100 / 5 as complete

Use the case according to what no info means: empty or null.

Answer 3

i think this would be better solved in php where you make a function that defines the column names and assigns a weight to each one and then calculatea the %complete based on the data retrieved from the db that why a name can count for 20% and an age can count for 5% etc. and the columns and weight definitions can even be stored externally in say an xml file so someone else can play with percentages and dont need a programmer to tweak the requirements