Counting groups of objects

Class->count_group_by()

The count_group_by method can be used to retrieve a list of all the distinct values that appear in a given column along with a count of how many objects carry that value. The routine can also be used with more than one column, in which case it retrieves the distinct pairs (or n-tuples) of values in those columns, along with the counts. Yet more powerful, any SQL expression can be used in place of the column names to count how many object produce any given result values when run through those expressions.

$iter = MT::Foo->count_group_by($terms, {%args, group => $group_exprs});

$terms and %args pick out a subset of the MT::Foo objects in the usual way. $group_expressions is an array reference containing the SQL expressions for the values you want to group by. A single row will be returned for each distinct tuple of values resulting from the $group_expressions. For example, if $group_expressions were just a single column (e.g. group => ['created_on']) then a single row would be returned for each distinct value of the created_on column. If $group_expressions were multiple columns, a row would be returned for each distinct pair (or n-tuple) of values found in those columns.

Each application of the iterator $iter returns a list in the form:

($count, $group_val1, $group_val2, ...)

Where $count is the number of MT::Foo objects for which the group expressions are the values ($group_val1, $group_val2, …). These values are in the same order as the corresponding group expressions in the $group_exprs argument.

In this example, we load up groups of MT::Pip objects, grouped by the pair (catid, invoiceid), and print how many pips have that pair of values.

$iter = MT::Pip->count_group_by(undef,
                                {group => ['cat_id',
                                           'invoice_id']});
while (($count, $cat, $inv) = $iter->()) {
    print "There are $count Pips with " .
        "category $cat and invoice $inv\n";
}