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# Count
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<br>
Counts the number of elements within each aggregation. The `Count`
transform has three varieties:

* `Count.globally()` counts the number of elements in the entire
  `PCollection`. The result is a collection with a single element.
* `Count.perKey()` counts how many elements are associated with each
  key. It ignores the values. The resulting collection has one
  output for every key in the input collection.
* `Count.perElement()` counts how many times each element appears
  in the input collection. The output collection is a key-value
  pair, containing each unique element and the number of times it
  appeared in the original collection.

## Examples
See [BEAM-7703](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-7703) for updates.

## Related transforms 
* [ApproximateUnique]({{ site.baseurl }}/documentation/transforms/java/aggregation/approximateunique)
  estimates the number of distinct elements or distinct values in key-value pairs
* [Sum]({{ site.baseurl }}/documentation/transforms/java/aggregation/sum) computes
  the sum of elements in a collection