Checking Row Existence Using PDO

You've encountered difficulty verifying row existence in a database using PDO. To address this issue, consider the following solution:

As suggested in the answer, you can directly check the return value of the query. Here's an example:

$stmt = $conn->prepare('SELECT * FROM table WHERE ID=?');
$stmt->bindParam(1, $_GET['id'], PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->execute();
$row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

if (!$row) {
    echo 'Row does not exist';
}

In this code, $stmt->execute() attempts to execute the query. If no row is found, $stmt->fetch() returns FALSE. This allows you to use the if (!$row) condition to determine whether the row exists.

Additionally, if you wish to check for multiple rows or avoid fetching the row, you can use the $stmt->fetchAll() method:

$rows = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

if (!$rows) {
    echo 'No rows found';
}

Alternatively, you can instruct MySQL to return a 1 when a row is found:

$sql = 'SELECT 1 from table WHERE id = ? LIMIT 1';
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute([$_GET['id']]);

if ($stmt->fetchColumn()) echo 'Row found';

This approach eliminates the need for fetching the row, improving efficiency.