`while` is not showing the echo in php - php

Question

I'm creating a small private forum to get some more knowledge about PHP/PDO etc. Now I have a weird bug/error/wrong piece of code that is not showing the echo. This is my code.
$sql2 = $db->prepare('SELECT topic_id, topic_subject,topic_date,topic_cat FROM topics WHERE topic_cat = :topid');
$sql2->bindParam(':topid', $_GET['id'], PDO::PARAM_INT);
$sql2->execute();
$result2 = $sql->rowCount();
if($result2 === FALSE){
echo 'The topics could not be displayed, please try again later.';
}
elseif ($result2 === 0){
echo 'There are no topics in this category yet.';
} else {
//prepare the table
echo '<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Topic</th>
<th>Created at</th>
</tr>';
while($row = $sql2->fetch()) {
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td class="leftpart">';
echo '<h3>' . $row['topic_subject'] . '<br /><h3>';
echo '</td>';
echo '<td class="rightpart">';
echo date('d-m-Y', strtotime($row['topic_date']));
echo '</td>';
echo '</tr>';
}
}
It should show the echo at while($row = $sql2->fetch()), but it is not. Also I know there is not enough { and } but that's because the other part of the code is not relevant.

Answer 1

You appear to count the rows returned by $sql then loop through $sql2. Have you checked to see if there are any results in $sql2?