How to Check if value exists in a MySQL database

Question

Suppose I have this table:

id | name | city
------------------
1  | n1   | c1
2  | n2   | c2
3  | n3   | c3
4  | n4   | c4

I want to check

Answer 1

Assuming the connection is established and is available in global scope;

//Check if a value exists in a table
function record_exists ($table, $column, $value) {
    global $connection;
    $query = "SELECT * FROM {$table} WHERE {$column} = {$value}";
    $result = mysql_query ( $query, $connection );
    if ( mysql_num_rows ( $result ) ) {
        return TRUE;
    } else {
        return FALSE;
    }
}

Usage: Assuming that the value to be checked is stored in the variable $username;

if (record_exists ( 'employee', 'username', $username )){
    echo "Username is not available. Try something else.";
} else {
    echo "Username is available";
}