MySQL: A bit complex query is returning count results wrong

Question

There are these three tables:

posts
posts_replies
likes

This query is returning me data almost fine but for some reason the COUNT of Replies on Posts is not accurate.

SELECT posts.title, posts.num, posts.status, posts.category, posts.content, posts.member_num, COUNT( posts_replies.post_num ) AS count, COUNT( likes.comment_num ) AS likes_count
FROM posts_replies
INNER JOIN posts ON ( posts_replies.post_num = posts.num )
LEFT JOIN likes ON ( likes.comment_num = posts_replies.num )
WHERE posts.status =1
AND posts.access = 'Public'
GROUP BY posts.num
ORDER BY count DESC
LIMIT 50

This is the count that i am using: COUNT( posts_replies.post_num ) AS count

Any advices on this?

Thank you

Answer 1

Your query will count each reply once for each like linked to that reply.

In order to count each reply just once, replace

COUNT( posts_replies.post_num ) AS count

with

COUNT(DISTINCT posts_replies.num ) AS count