php - Best way to check if mysql_query returned any results?

Question

I'm looking for the best way to check and see if any results were returned in a query. I feel like I write this part of code a lot and sometimes I get errors, and sometimes I don't.

For example, I run this query to check if a username exists before inserting a new one into the database.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM ...");

Then I want to check and see if any results were returned. Here is one way I do it:

if (!$result) { PERFORM ACTION }

If the first way doesn't work, then sometimes this will:

if (mysql_num_rows($result)==0) { PERFORM ACTION }

Then I even saw that I could do it this way the other day:

list($total) = mysql_fetch_row($result);
if ($total==0) { PERFORM ACTION }

What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

if (mysql_num_rows($result)==0) { PERFORM ACTION }

For PHP 5 and 7 and above use mysqli:

if (mysqli_num_rows($result)==0) { PERFORM ACTION }