The best way to check login info

[edwardp]

I have a MySQL database which stores intranet user data (name, username, password (encrypted), department) is the following

is the following a viable way of verifyin the login

select count(id) from table where (username='username') and (password='encytpedPassword');

if the record exists, i should get 1 as it should be the only username in the database and also i am not returning any data from the database until the count(id) = 1 and then run another script to retrieve the required data at another point...is this overkill???

[devinemke]

i see no reason to do a COUNT() query when you only expect 1 or 0 rows returned and you will want to grab the actual data anyway. go ahead and grab the data and simply use [man]mysql_num_rows[/man] to see if that row was found.