Adding COUNTS of multiple columns

Okay, I have learned that you cannot simply list a bunch of columns in a SELECT COUNT statement and expect it to work.

i.e. SELECT COUNT(images1,images2,images3) FROM members (which I guess really doesn't makes sense anyway)

I would think it's a pretty common thing to add the COUNTS of several columns in a table together and have found a plethora of articles on it, all different and none simple enough to makes sense to me.

Is there a common model that simply adds the COUNTS of column1 + column2 + column3?

If not what is the best practice? I thought about creating a single SELECT COUNT recordset for each column and then using php tp add them all up. However I have 10 columns that need to be added and I think I could do this easier than creating 10 more recordsets.

Thanks for your advice.

seems to me you are asking 2 questions here:

1) How to have more than one column count returned in a query:

SELECT COUNT(col1) as count1, COUNT(col2) AS count2 FROM tablename

2) How to add column counts together:

SELECT (COUNT(col1) + COUNT(col2)) as totalCount FROM tablename

Thanks Jason. I knew there had to be a way to write that with one recordset that was simple to understand. The W3school website although has a ton of great beginner help falls just short of my needs sometimes and the other examples I come across are either too advanced or not explained so that I can understand and learn from them.

Thanks again!

I'm havng the same issue. Is there a way to query the database using count with a where statement? I need to find a specific value that shows in several columns (within my table) across my database. I need something like:

SELECT (COUNT(col1) + COUNT(col2)) as totalCount FROM tablename
WHERE col1, col2 = 'my value in multiple columns' AND UserID='colname'

I've tried using IN and LIKE/ also AND/OR and I still can't get the sql query to work correctly.

SELECT (COUNT(col1) + COUNT(col2)) as totalCount FROM tablename
WHERE col1 IN (val1, val2, val3) AND col2 IN (val1, val2, val3) AND UserID='colname'