Question

Whats the most efficient way of selecting total number of records from a large table? Currently, Im simply doing

$result = mysql_query('SELECT id FROM table'); $total = mysql_num_rows($result) 

I was told this was not very efficient or fast, if you have a lot of records in the table.

Answer 1

You were told correctly. mysql can do this count for you which is much more efficient.

$result = mysql_query( 'select count(id) as num_rows from table' ); $row = mysql_fetch_object( $result ); $total = $row->num_rows;