PHP/MySQL Count Num Rows

You should consider using PDO, it's safer and a more object oriented approach:

$database = new PDO(/*connection info/db*/);

$statement = $database->prepare('SELECT FROM fruit WHERE fruit_id = ? AND name = ?');
$statement->bindValue( 1, 'fruit_id_value' );
$statement->bindValue( 2, 'Banana' );
$statement->execute();

$count = $statement->rowCount(); # <-- The row count you are looking for!

--> visit http://php.net/manual/en/pdostatement.rowcount.php for more info

in Mysqli I know you can do

printf("Number of rows: %d.\n", $sql->num_rows);

Here is all the code

<?php
/* Open a connection */
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world");

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
    exit();
}

$query = "SELECT Name, CountryCode FROM City ORDER BY Name LIMIT 20";
if ($stmt = $mysqli->prepare($query)) {

    /* execute query */
    $stmt->execute();

    /* store result */
    $stmt->store_result();

    printf("Number of rows: %d.\n", $stmt->num_rows);

    /* close statement */
    $stmt->close();
}

/* close connection */
$mysqli->close();
?>

I got that from this php manual http://php.net/manual/en/mysqli-stmt.num-rows.php

There is a modifier for the SELECT query that holds on to the information of the count you need: SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS  * from users WHERE /* rest of code */

After running that query, you can run SELECT FOUND_ROWS(); to get the resulting number of rows.

If all you need is the count, you can just do

SELECT count(*) from users WHERE /* rest of code */