mysql_num_rows always returns 1

Question

The result is always 1:

$sql = \'SELECT COUNT(Vote) FROM \' . $table;
$res = mysql_query($sql, $conn);
$vote_total = mysql_num_rows($res);

Answer 1

The tricky part is that even when the sql query contains a COUNT() statement, it is still a query result like any other. MySQL will return a row containg a single column with the number of rows that would have been returned, should you have issued a reglar query. mysql_num_rows() on the other hand, just counts the number of rows in the result of the query that was actually executed. In this case it is always a single row.

What you want is:

$sql = 'SELECT COUNT(Vote) FROM ' . $table;
$res = mysql_query($sql, $conn);
$data = mysql_fetch_row($res);
$vote_total = $data[0];