Why is PDO fetchColumn() not working here

Question

I\'m trying to count the number of rows returned by a query, and I\'m doing like this:

$what = \'Norman\';
$stmt = $conn->prepare(\'select names as names          


        

Answer 1

If you want to get the number of rows returned use rowCount

// ...
$rows = $stmt->rowCount();

echo 'Rows found '.$rows;
// ...

Answer 2

Looks like you are using improper functions here.

$what = 'Norman';
$stmt = $conn->prepare('select names from names where names = ?');
$stmt->execute(array($what));
$rows = $stmt->fetchAll(); // it will actually return all the rows

echo 'Rows found '.count($rows);

foreach ($rows as $row)
{  
    echo $row['names'] . "<br>";
}

or you can make it even neater, by getting 1d array instead of 2d

$rows = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_COLUMN, 0); 

echo 'Rows found '.count($rows);

foreach ($rows as $name)
{  
    echo $name . "<br>";
}

But you have to check for PDO errors first