Question

What’s the best way to check whether the value is in the database?

Am I doing it correct?

$result = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table WHERE name = 'John'");
$count = count($result);

Answer 1

Yes you are doing it right, if you are only concerned with checking if there are any records where name=’john’

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table WHERE name = 'John'

will return the no. of records where name field is ‘John’. if there are no records then it will return 0, and if there are any records it will return the number of records.

But the above query will miss the entries where name is ‘John Abraham’ or ‘V john’, to include even these

you can modify your query like this.

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table WHERE name like '%John%'