Question

I would like to run a query that adds 1 to the qa_votes field, and then retrieves the resulting value of that field so I can show it on the front end.

So the code draft would be

    $this->db->query("
    UPDATE  qa
    SET     qa_votes = qa_votes +1
    WHERE   qa_id = $question_id;
    ");

followed by

    $query = $this->db->query("
    SELECT  qa_id, qa_votes
    FROM    qa
    WHERE   qa_id = $question_id;
    ");

Is there a way of combining these 2 into a single query?

Answer 1

Short answer: No.

Long Answer: Not with an out-of-the-box command. UPDATE command does not provide that. You could, however, write a Stored Procedure that updates and then brings back the result.