php echo if query is empty - php

Question

I'm querying a database but when the result is empty i want to output a table row displaying "nothing to display" but the if seems to always return true.
Here's my code...
$priorityincidentsQ = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM applications WHERE pi >= ('2') ");
while($priorityincidentsR = mysql_fetch_object($priorityincidentsQ))
{
if (empty($priorityincidentsR)) {
echo "<tr><td class=\"closedcallscell centered\"><b>Nothing to display</b></td></tr>";
} else {
echo "<tr><td class=\"closedcallscell\"><b>$priorityincidentsR->application_friendly_name</b></td>";
echo "<td class=\"closedcallscell table_row_small\"><center>$priorityincidentsR->pi</center></td></tr>";
}
}

Answer 1

Use mysqli_num_rows() to check is there any result:
$conn = mysqli_connect($host, $user, $password, $database);
$priorityincidentsQ = mysqli_query($conn, "SELECT * FROM applications WHERE pi >= ('2') ");
if (mysqli_num_rows($priorityincidentsQ) > 0){
while ($priorityincidentsR = mysqli_fetch_object($priorityincidentsQ)) {
echo "<tr><td class=\"closedcallscell\"><b>$priorityincidentsR->application_friendly_name</b></td>";
echo "<td class=\"closedcallscell table_row_small\"><center>$priorityincidentsR->pi</center></td></tr>";
}
}else{
echo "<tr><td class=\"closedcallscell centered\"><b>Nothing to display</b></td></tr>";
}
And yes, better use mysqli_* functions instead of mysql_*.

Answer 2

Still never figured out why this wouldn't work out for me this way, I tried the query directly in SQL workbench and everything looks how it should, I ended up solving the problem like this.
<!-- priority incidents-->
<?php
$priorityincidentsQ = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM applications WHERE pi >= ('1') ");
while($priorityincidentsR = mysql_fetch_object($priorityincidentsQ))
{
echo "<tr><td class=\"closedcallscell\"><b>$priorityincidentsR->application_friendly_name</b></td>";
echo "<td class=\"closedcallscell table_row_small\"><center>$priorityincidentsR->pi</center></td></tr>";
}
?>
<!-- if no incidents-->
<?php
$incidentNumberofRowsQ = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*)numberofrows FROM applications WHERE pi >= ('1') ");
while($incidentNumberofRowsR = mysql_fetch_object($incidentNumberofRowsQ))
{
if ($incidentNumberofRowsR->numberofrows == '0')
{
echo "<tr><td class=\"closedcallscell centered\"><b>Currently no priority incidents</b></td>";
}
}
?>
may seem a rather silly way of going about it but atleast it works. Thanks all for the help. :)