Best way to test if a row exists in a MySQL table

Question

I\'m trying to find out if a row exists in a table. Using MySQL, is it better to do a query like this:

SELECT COUNT(*) AS total FROM table1 WHERE ...
         


        

Answer 1

At times it is quite handy to get the auto increment primary key (id) of the row if it exists and 0 if it doesn't.

Here's how this can be done in a single query:

SELECT IFNULL(`id`, COUNT(*)) FROM WHERE ...