How can the count function in MySQL be utilized to efficiently determine the number of records in a table in PHP?

The count function in MySQL can be utilized to efficiently determine the number of records in a table by executing a SQL query that counts the number of rows in the table. This count value can then be fetched and used in PHP to display the total number of records. By using the count function directly in the SQL query, we can avoid fetching all records and counting them in PHP, which can be inefficient for large datasets. 

<?php
// Connect to MySQL database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// SQL query to count number of records in a table
$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) as total FROM table_name";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    $row = $result->fetch_assoc();
    echo "Total number of records: " . $row["total"];
} else {
    echo "No records found";
}

$conn->close();
?>

Keywords

PHP MySQL count function records table

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