How do I count rows with matching id? - php

Question

I'm currently having some difficulty with determining if any rows match a specific user id. The code runs fine, but the if statement (if($notifs !== false) always returns true and hence "No notifications found" never displays. How do I write the statement to only check for "receive_id" that match the current session id?
$user_id = $_SESSION['userID'];
if(isset($_POST["view"]))
{
$stmt = $user_notif->runQuery("SELECT * FROM tbl_users WHERE userID=:uid");
$stmt->execute(array(":uid"=>$user_id));
$row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
$stmt = $user_notif->runQuery("SELECT * FROM notif_follow WHERE receive_id= ? ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 5");
$stmt->bindValue(1,$user_id);
$stmt->execute();
$notifs = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
$notification = '';
if($notifs !== false)
{
foreach($notifs as $notif)
{
$send_id = $notif['send_id'];
$query2 = $user_notif->runQuery("SELECT id FROM following WHERE user1_id=:uid1 AND user2_id=:uid2");
$query2->execute(array(":uid1"=>$user_id,":uid2"=>$send_id));
$query2result = $query2->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
if($query2result !== false){
$follow .= '<button class="button">Remove Channel</button>';
}
else{
$follow .= '<button class="button">Add Channel</button>';
}
$notification .= '
<li>
<div class="notifbox">
<strong style="color: #4b8ed3;">'.$notif["send_name"].'</strong><p style="color: #fff;"> has added you.</p>
'.$follow.'
&nbsp<button class="button">View Channel</button>
</div>
</li>
<div class="sectionheader3"></div>
';
}
}
else
{
$notification .= '<li><h2 style="color: #4b8ed3; padding: 10px;">No Notifications Found<h2></li>';
}

Answer 1

fetchAll only returns false if the query failed, but it's not failing. The result is an array. Your best to check if count($notifs) > 0 and also if $notifs === false for the possibility of the query failing.

Answer 2

http://php.net/manual/en/pdostatement.fetchall.php says:
An empty array is returned if there are zero results to fetch, or FALSE on failure.
A query that matches zero rows is not a failure. It's a success at giving you the information that there are zero matching rows.
So you shouldn't compare with $notifs !== false, which compares exactly to the boolean false. You might like to compare with:
if (!$notifs)
This will also test for the empty array.

Answer 3

Try
if ($stmt->RowCount() > 0) {
$notifs = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
//code here
}
Instead of
$notifs = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
if($notifs !== false) {
//code here
}