Quite a few times during projects I only want to find a single value from the database. But rather than setting up WHILE loop, I’ve been using a quick function that does two things perfectly.

Here’s the function:

// returns single result
function mysql_one_data($query)
{
   $one=mysql_query($query);
   $r=mysql_fetch_row($one);
   return($r[0]);
}

// returns single array
function mysql_one_array($query)
{
   $one=mysql_query($query) or die (mysql_error());
   $r=mysql_fetch_array($one);
   return($r);
}

Say for example I wanted just the date of a record. All I have to do is make sure to call the function and then do the following:

// single value
$date = mysql_one_data("SELECT date FROM records WHERE id='2' LIMIT 1");

// single array
$date_info = mysql_one_array("SELECT firstname, lastname, date FROM records WHERE id='2' LIMIT 1");

// you can then use the single $date_info array like
echo $date_info['firstname'].' '.$date_info['lastname'].' ('.$date_info['date'].')';

Just let me know if you have any questions about this.