How to specify the parent query field from within a subquery in mySQL?

Is there a way to specify the parent query field from within a subquery in mySQL?

For Example:
I have written a basic Bulletin Board type program in PHP.

In the database each post contains: id(PK) and parent_id(the id of the parent post). If the post is itself a parent, then its parent_id is set to 0.

I am trying to write a mySQL query that will find every parent post and the number of children that the parent has.

$query = "SELECT id, (
      SELECT COUNT(1) 
      FROM post_table 
      WHERE parent_id = id
) as num_children
FROM post_table
WHERE parent_id = 0";

The tricky part is that the first id doesn't know that it should be referring to the second id that is outside of the subquery. I know that I can do SELECT id AS id_tmp and then refer to it inside the subquery, but then if I want to also return the id and keep "id" as the column name, then I'd have to do a query that returns me 2 columns with the same data (which seems messy to me)

$query = "SELECT id, id AS id_tmp, 
            (SELECT COUNT(1)
            FROM post_table
            WHERE parent_id = id_tmp) as num_children
         FROM post_table
         WHERE parent_id = 0";

The messy way works fine, but I feel an opportunity to learn something here so I thought I'd post the question.

 Answers

How about:

$query = "SELECT p1.id, 
                 (SELECT COUNT(1) 
                    FROM post_table p2 
                   WHERE p2.parent_id = p1.id) as num_children
            FROM post_table p1
           WHERE p1.parent_id = 0";

or if you put an alias on the p1.id, you might say:

$query = "SELECT p1.id as p1_id, 
                 (SELECT COUNT(1) 
                    FROM post_table p2 
                   WHERE p2.parent_id = p1.id) as num_children
            FROM post_table p1
           WHERE p1.parent_id = 0";

---

Give the tables unique names:

$query = "SELECT a.id, (SELECT COUNT(1) FROM post_table b WHERE parent_id = a.id) as num_children FROM post_table a WHERE a.parent_id = 0";

---

Thanks Don. I had a nested query as shown below and a WHERE clause in it wasn't able to determine alias v1. Here is the code which isn't working:

Select 
    teamid,
    teamname
FROM
    team as t1
INNER JOIN (
    SELECT 
        venue_id, 
        venue_scores, 
        venue_name 
    FROM venue 
    WHERE venue_scores = (
        SELECT 
            MAX(venue_scores) 
        FROM venue as v2 
        WHERE v2.venue_id = v1.venue_id      /* this where clause wasn't working */
    ) as v1    /* v1 alias already present here */
);

So, I just added the alias v1 again inside the JOIN. Which made it work.

Select 
    teamid,
    teamname
FROM
    team as t1
INNER JOIN (
    SELECT 
        venue_id, 
        venue_scores, 
        venue_name 
    FROM venue as v1              /* added alias v1 here again */
    WHERE venue_scores = (
        SELECT 
            MAX(venue_scores) 
        FROM venue as v2 
        WHERE v2.venue_id = v1.venue_id   /* Now this works!! */
    ) as v1     /* v1 alias already present here */
);

Hope this will be helpful for someone.