Finding shared list IDs in a MySQL table using bitwise operands
- by landons
I want to find items in common from the "following_list" column in a table of users:
+----+--------------------+-------------------------------------+
| id | name | following_list |
+----+--------------------+-------------------------------------+
| 9 | User 1 | 26,6,12,10,21,24,19,16 |
| 10 | User 2 | 21,24 |
| 12 | User 3 | 9,20,21,26,30 |
| 16 | User 4 | 6,52,9,10 |
| 19 | User 5 | 9,10,6,24 |
| 21 | User 6 | 9,10,6,12 |
| 24 | User 7 | 9,10,6 |
| 46 | User 8 | 45 |
| 52 | User 9 | 10,12,16,21,19,20,18,17,23,25,24,22 |
+----+--------------------+-------------------------------------+
I was hoping to be able to sort by the number of matches for a given user id. For example, I want to match all users except #9 against #9 to see which of the IDs in the "following_list" column they have in common.
I found a way of doing this through the "SET" datatype and some bit trickery:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/mysql-set-datatype.html#bits
However, I need to do this on an arbitrary list of IDs. I was hoping this could be done entirely through the database, but this is a little out of my league. Any bit gurus out there?
Thanks,
Landon
