LUA - Most common item in the table

Question

I have a table like below, I don't need to know which product sells how much, I just want to know which product is the most popular. Do you have any idea which method is the best way to do this? Like in the example below, knowing that because 3 of the product "blue" have been sold, it is the most popular

local products = {}

products["430373bb5b7a40a04f9"] = "red"
products["0dce4263af4b5cfe0de"] = "red"
products["cf2559afb736c1eb1bc"] = "green"
products["abc4d248541c3386c88"] = "blue"
products["bb9386c65270948ebee"] = "blue"
products["b193fba741cd646a9c0"] = "blue"

Answer 1

this example will count the number of sales in a single pass.

local products = {}

products["430373bb5b7a40a04f9"] = "red"
products["0dce4263af4b5cfe0de"] = "red"
products["cf2559afb736c1eb1bc"] = "green"
products["abc4d248541c3386c88"] = "blue"
products["bb9386c65270948ebee"] = "blue"
products["b193fba741cd646a9c0"] = "blue"

local pop = {}

for k,v in pairs(products) do
   pop[v] = (pop[v] or 0) + 1
end

-- if you need to sort by sales then: 

local pop_s = {}
for k,v in pairs(pop) do
    pop_s[#pop_s+1] = { item=k, sales=v}
end
table.sort(pop_s, function (a,b)  return a.sales>b.sales end)
for k,v in pairs(pop_s) do
   print(v.item,v.sales)
end

result:

blue    3
red    2
green    1