Question

On Zend_Db_Table_Abstract I’m using this code to get the count of results for my select:

$this->setTableName('visitors');
$select = $this->select()
               ->from('visitors')
               ->columns(array('total' => new Zend_Db_Expr('COUNT(*)')))
               ->where('...');
$visits = $this->_fetch($select);

Is there a better way, ie, just to return the count. This returns some other data in an array… I just want the count of results. In straight mySQl the equivalent would be select count(mycol) from visitors where ....

Answer 1

This is untested, but should get you started:

$results = $this->getAdapter()
  ->query("SELECT COUNT(*) AS total FROM visitors WHERE ...")
  ->fetchAll();
$visits = $results[0]["total"];

You aren’t required to use the Table/Select interface for every query.

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update: +1 to the comment from @SMka, for pointing out that this can be even simpler:

$visits = $this->getAdapter()
  ->fetchOne("SELECT COUNT(*) AS total FROM visitors WHERE ...");