[php] Checking for empty result (php, pdo, mysql)

Please, can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong here? I'm simply retrieving results from a table then adding them to an array. Everything works as expected until I check for an empty result...

This gets the match, adds it to my array and echoes the result as expected:

$today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('now'));

$sth = $db->prepare("SELECT id_email FROM db WHERE hardcopy = '1' AND hardcopy_date <= :today AND hardcopy_sent = '0' ORDER BY id_email ASC");

$sth->bindParam(':today',$today, PDO::PARAM_STR);

if(!$sth->execute()) {
    $db = null ;
    exit();
}

while ($row = $sth->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
    $this->id_email[] = $row['id_email'] ;
    echo $row['id_email'] ;
}

$db = null ;
return true ;

When I try to check for an empty result, my code returns 'empty', but no longer yields the matching result:

$today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('now'));

$sth = $db->prepare("SELECT id_email FROM db WHERE hardcopy = '1' AND hardcopy_date <= :today AND hardcopy_sent = '0' ORDER BY id_email ASC");

$sth->bindParam(':today',$today, PDO::PARAM_STR);

if(!$sth->execute()) {
    $db = null ;
    exit();
}

if ($sth->fetchColumn()) {
    echo 'not empty';
    while ($row = $sth->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
        $this->id_email[] = $row['id_email'] ;
        echo $row['id_email'] ;
    }
    $db = null ;
    return true ;
}
echo 'empty';
$db = null ;
return false ;

As always, any help is appreciated. Thanks!

If you have the option of using fetchAll() then if there are no rows returned it will just be and empty array.

count($sql->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC))

will return the number of rows returned.

I only found one way that worked...

$quote = $pdomodel->executeQuery("SELECT * FROM MyTable");

//if (!is_array($quote)) {  didn't work
//if (!isset($quote)) {  didn't work

if (count($quote) == 0) {   //yep the count worked.
    echo 'Record does not exist.';
    die;
}

Thanks to Marc B's help, here's what worked for me (note: Marc's rowCount() suggestion could work too, but I wasn't comfortable with the possibility of it not working on a different DB or if something changed in mine... also, his select count(*) suggestion would work too, but, I figured because I'd end up getting the data if it existed anyways, so I went this way)

$today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('now'));

$sth = $db->prepare("SELECT id_email FROM db WHERE hardcopy = '1' AND hardcopy_date <= :today AND hardcopy_sent = '0' ORDER BY id_email ASC");

$sth->bindParam(':today',$today, PDO::PARAM_STR);

if(!$sth->execute()) {
    $db = null ;
    exit();
}

while ($row = $sth->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
    $this->id_email[] = $row['id_email'] ;
    echo $row['id_email'] ;
}
$db = null ;

if (count($this->id_email) > 0) {
    echo 'not empty';
    return true ;
}
echo 'empty';
return false ;

$sql = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * from member WHERE member_email = '$username' AND member_password = '$password'");

$sql->execute();

$fetch = $sql->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

// if not empty result
if (is_array($fetch))  {
    $_SESSION["userMember"] = $fetch["username"];
    $_SESSION["password"] = $fetch["password"];
    echo 'yes this member is registered'; 
}else {
    echo 'empty result!';
}

what I'm doing wrong here?

Almost everything.

$today = date('Y-m-d'); // no need for strtotime

$sth = $db->prepare("SELECT id_email FROM db WHERE hardcopy = '1' AND hardcopy_date <= :today AND hardcopy_sent = '0' ORDER BY id_email ASC");

$sth->bindParam(':today',$today); // no need for PDO::PARAM_STR

$sth->execute(); // no need for if
$this->id_email = $sth->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_COLUMN); // no need for while

return count($this->id_email); // no need for the everything else

effectively, you always have your fetched data (in this case in $this->id_email variable) to tell whether your query returned anything or not. Read more in my article on PDO.

Even though this is an old thread, I thought I would weigh in as I had to deal with this lately.

You should not use rowCount for SELECT statements as it is not portable. I use the isset function to test if a select statement worked:

$today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('now'));

$sth = $db->prepare("SELECT id_email FROM db WHERE hardcopy = '1' AND hardcopy_date <= :today AND hardcopy_sent = '0' ORDER BY id_email ASC");

//I would usually put this all in a try/catch block, but kept it the same for continuity
if(!$sth->execute(array(':today'=>$today))) 
{
    $db = null ;
    exit();
}

$result = $sth->fetch(PDO::FETCH_OBJ)

if(!isset($result->id_email))
{
    echo "empty";
}
else
{
    echo "not empty, value is $result->id_email";
}

$db = null;

Of course this is only for a single result, as you might have when looping over a dataset.

One more approach to consider:

When I build an HTML table or other database-dependent content (usually via an AJAX call), I like to check if the SELECT query returned any data before working on any markup. If there is no data, I simply return "No data found..." or something to that effect. If there is data, then go forward, build the headers and loop through the content, etc. Even though I will likely limit my database to MySQL, I prefer to write portable code, so rowCount() is out. Instead, check the the column count. A query that returns no rows also returns no columns.

$stmt->execute();
$cols = $stmt->columnCount(); // no columns == no result set
if ($cols > 0) {
    // non-repetitive markup code here
    while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {