Can't return correct row count from database using php pdo

Question

I am trying to return the row count from a table in my database but continue to get the wrong value. I need the row count to process subset values for pagination. There are 11 i

Answer 1

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tableName just returns a single row. The data in that row is the number of rows in the table. So $query->rowCount() will always be 1. If you want the number of rows, you need to use:

$query = $pdo->prepare("SELECT COUNT(*) ct FROM articles");
$query->execute();
$rowCount = $query->fetch(PDO::FETCH_OBJ)->ct;