Question

I have got that statment:

       $result1=mysql_query(" SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE user_name='$userName'") or exit(mysql_error());

and I want to find the count this way:

   if($row=mysql_fetch_array($result1))
   {
       $userNameResult=$row['COUNT(*)'];
   }

I think I am not doing it right? or am I? why do i put count(*) in the statment and in the row variable? why cant I put it once in either? instead of both..is that the way to do it.? is that the best practice

Answer 1

What you are doing works, but it might be better to create a column alias for COUNT(*) in the query, that you can reference in your fetch call. This is really only a readability improvement.

$result1=mysql_query(" SELECT COUNT(*) AS userCount FROM users WHERE user_name='$userName'") or exit(mysql_error());
//------------------------------------^^^^^^^^

if($row=mysql_fetch_array($result1))
{
    $userNameResult=$row['userCount'];
}

You could achieve the same thing without using a fetch call at all, if you modified your query to select all rows and then use mysql_num_rows(). Which method is more efficient depends somewhat on the contents of your database.

$result1=mysql_query("SELECT user_name FROM users WHERE user_name='$userName'");
// Echo the row count...
if ($result1) echo mysql_num_rows($result1);