Echoing a pseudo column value after a COUNT

Question

Hi Gang...

Please don't beat me if this is elementary. I searched and found disjointed stuff relating to pseudo columns. Nothing spot on about what I need.

Anyway... I have a table with some rows. Each record has a unique ID, an ID that relates to another entity and finally a comment that relates to that last entity.

So, I want to COUNT these rows to basically find what entity has the most comments.

Instead of me explaining the query, I'll print it

SELECT entity_id, COUNT(*) AS amount FROM comments GROUP BY entity_id ORDER BY amount DESC

The query does just what I want, but I want to echo the values from that pseudo column, 'amount'

Can it be done, or should I use another method like mysql_num_rows?

Thank you!!!

Answer 1

It's just the same as with the other column – you use the mysql_fetch_* family.

Note that moving to the Mysqli extension is encouraged. See here why.

Answer 2

Once you have the row in, say, $row, you can simply use the value of $row['amount'].