mysql - get number of rows with pdo

Question

I have a simple pdo prepared query:

$result = $db->prepare("select id, course from coursescompleted where person=:p"); 
$result ->bindParam(':p', $q, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$result->execute();
$rows = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM);
echo $rows[0];

the echo seems to be returning the ID value of the record, not the number of records returned by the query?

any idea or explanation for this?

Answer 1

You've executed a query that returns rows from the database, fetched the first row from the result into a variable and then echo'd the first column of that row.

If you want to count, do an SQL count()

$result = $db->prepare("select count(*) from coursescompleted where person=:p"); 
$result->bindParam(':p', $q, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$result->execute();
$rowCount = $result->fetchColumn(0);
echo $rowCount;