Count occurrence in table PHP echo

Question

I’m new to PHP and MySQL & while there are a bunch of examples on this throughout StackOverflow, but none of them apply very well to my situation.

So, I have a t

Answer 1

What exactly is this here:

<?php SELECT teacher, count(teacher) 
  FROM votes 
 GROUP by teacher ?>

As far as PHP is concerned, that is plain text & not a MySQL query. Quickly off the top of my head, this should work to show you the basic concept of how PHP & MySQL work with each other. Note the mysql_query.

$connection = mysql_connect($serverName, $userName, $password) or die('Unable to connect to Database host' . mysql_error());
$dbselect = mysql_select_db($dbname, $connection) or die("Unable to select database:$dbname" . mysql_error());
$result = mysql_query("SELECT teacher, count(teacher) as teacher_count FROM votes GROUP by teacher;");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo $row['teacher'];
    echo $row['teacher_count'];
}

That said, mysql_* prefixed PHP functions are depreciated. Meaning they will no longer work in upcoming version of PHP. So here is a version of your code using mysqli_* instead using examples from the official PHP documentation:

$link = mysqli_connect($serverName, $userName, $password, $dbname);

// Check the connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
    exit();
}

// Select queries return a resultset
if ($result = mysqli_query($link, "SELECT teacher, count(teacher) as teacher_count FROM votes GROUP by teacher;")) {
    // This is optional. Feel free to comment out this line.
    printf("Select returned %d rows.\n", mysqli_num_rows($result));

    // Cycle through results
    while ($row = $result->fetch_object()){
        echo $row['teacher'];
        echo $row['teacher_count'];
    }
}