How can I count users in a month that were not present in the month before? - sql

Question

I am trying to count unique users on a monthly basis that were not present in the previous month. So if a user has a record for January and then another one for February, then I would only count January for that user.
user_id time
a1 1/2/17
a1 2/10/17
a2 2/18/17
a4 2/5/17
a5 3/25/17
My results should look like this
Month User Count
January 1
February 2
March 1

Answer 1

I'm not really familiar with BigQuery, but here's how I would solve the problem using TSQL. I imagine that you'd be able to use similar logic in BigQuery.
1). Order the data by user_id first, and then time. In TSQL, you can accomplish this with the following and store it in a common table expression, which you will query in the step after this.
;WITH cte AS
(
select ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY [user_id] ORDER BY [time]) AS rn,*
from dbo.employees
)
2). Next query for only the rows with rn = 1 (the first occurrence for a particular user) and group by the month.
select DATENAME(month, [time]) AS [Month], count(*) AS user_count
from cte
where rn = 1
group by DATENAME(month, [time])
This is assuming that 2017 is the only year you're dealing with. If you're dealing with more than one year, you probably want step #2 to look something like this:
select year([time]) as [year], DATENAME(month, [time]) AS [month],
count(*) AS user_count
from cte
where rn = 1
group by year([time]), DATENAME(month, [time])

Answer 2

First aggregate by the user id and the month. Then use lag() to see if the user was present in the previous month:
with du as (
select date_trunc(time, month) as yyyymm, user_id
from t
group by date_trunc(time, month)
)
select yyyymm, count(*)
from (select du.*,
lag(yyyymm) over (partition by user_id order by yyyymm) as prev_yyyymm
from du
) du
where prev_yyyymm is not null or
prev_yyyymm < date_add(yyyymm, interval 1 month)
group by yyyymm;
Note: This uses the date functions, but similar functions exist for timestamp.

Answer 3

The way I understood question is - to exclude user to be counted in given month only if same user presented in previous month. But if same user present in few months before given, but not in previous - user should be counted.
If this is correct - Try below for BigQuery Standard SQL
#standardSQL
SELECT Year, Month, COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) AS User_Count
FROM (
SELECT *,
DATE_DIFF(time, LAG(time) OVER(PARTITION BY user_id ORDER BY time), MONTH) AS flag
FROM (
SELECT
user_id,
DATE_TRUNC(PARSE_DATE('%x', time), MONTH) AS time,
EXTRACT(YEAR FROM PARSE_DATE('%x', time)) AS Year,
FORMAT_DATE('%B', PARSE_DATE('%x', time)) AS Month
FROM yourTable
GROUP BY 1, 2, 3, 4
)
)
WHERE IFNULL(flag, 0) <> 1
GROUP BY Year, Month, time
ORDER BY time
you can test / play with above using below example with dummy data from your question
#standardSQL
WITH yourTable AS (
SELECT 'a1' AS user_id, '1/2/17' AS time UNION ALL
SELECT 'a1', '2/10/17' UNION ALL
SELECT 'a2', '2/18/17' UNION ALL
SELECT 'a4', '2/5/17' UNION ALL
SELECT 'a5', '3/25/17'
)
SELECT Year, Month, COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) AS User_Count
FROM (
SELECT *,
DATE_DIFF(time, LAG(time) OVER(PARTITION BY user_id ORDER BY time), MONTH) AS flag
FROM (
SELECT
user_id,
DATE_TRUNC(PARSE_DATE('%x', time), MONTH) AS time,
EXTRACT(YEAR FROM PARSE_DATE('%x', time)) AS Year,
FORMAT_DATE('%B', PARSE_DATE('%x', time)) AS Month
FROM yourTable
GROUP BY 1, 2, 3, 4
)
)
WHERE IFNULL(flag, 0) <> 1
GROUP BY Year, Month, time
ORDER BY time
The output is
Year Month User_Count
2017 January 1
2017 February 2
2017 March 1

Answer 4

Try this query:
SELECT
t1.d,
count(DISTINCT t1.user_id)
FROM
(
SELECT
EXTRACT(MONTH FROM time) AS d,
--EXTRACT(MONTH FROM time)-1 AS d2,
user_id
FROM nbitra.tmp
) t1
LEFT JOIN
(
SELECT
EXTRACT(MONTH FROM time) AS d,
user_id
FROM nbitra.tmp
) t2
ON t1.d = t2.d+1
WHERE
(
t1.user_id <> t2.user_id --User is in previous month
OR t2.user_id IS NULL --To handle january, since there is no previous month to compare to
)
GROUP BY t1.d;