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\'].\')\';