Returning a single value using PDO MYSQL - php

Question

I am crossing over to PDO and want to, simply put, return a single value from a table (and I feel really stupid for not getting it right). I am not getting any errors, but also no values, where there should be :)
try {
$sql = "SELECT `column_name` FROM `table` ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT 1";
$query = $this->handler->query($sql);
$result = $query->fetchColumn();
print_r($result);
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
return false;
}
return true;

Answer 1

Print the error message:
catch(PDOException $e) {
print_r($e->getMessage());
return false;
}
As shown this would work, if you have correctly connected to the database.
Check that your object is successfully connecting to the database, and that you have the correct column name and table name.
A snippet from one of my DB classes:
/**********************************************************************
* Try to connect to mySQL database
*/
public function connect($dbuser, $dbpassword, $dbhost ,$dbname)
{
try {
$this->dbh = new PDO("mysql:host=$dbhost;dbname=$dbname", $dbuser, $dbpassword);
$this->dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
return true;
} catch (PDOException $e) {
$this->setError($e->getMessage());
}
}