'Efficiently' fetch single value from MySQL table using php

Question

I need help understanding how to “efficiently” extract one field/column/cell (that is, one piece of information) from one row of a MySQL table using Procedural Style. The horridly long method would be something like:

$Qry = "SELECT Surname FROM SurnameList WHERE SID = 8 LIMIT 1";
$QryResult = mysqli_query($DBLink, $Qry);
if ($QryResult)
{
    $QryRow = mysqli_fetch_assoc($QryResult);
    $ThisSurname = $QryRow['Surname'];
    mysqli_free_result($QryResult);
}
else 
{
   die("Transaction Failure");
}

Uggg. For me, this can be compacted while still retaining readability:

if ($QryResult = mysqli_query($DBLink, "SELECT Surname FROM SurnameList WHERE SID = 8 LIMIT 1") {
    $QryRow = mysqli_fetch_assoc($QryResult);
    $ThisSurname = $QryRow['Surname'];
    mysqli_free_result($QryResult);
} else die("Transaction Failure");

Even compacted like this, it still takes 5 lines to get one piece of information. Isn't there a way to reduce the line count for this task within Procedural Style while retaining readability? Some way to compact/combine lines 2 and 3?

Answer 1

Your code is short enough that you aren't meaningfully impacting 'efficiency' at the parser. That said, you can trim a few lines by reversing your conditional to die only if the query fails (general tip, design code to avoid using else) and one-line fetching your desired result.

$QryResult = mysqli_query($DBLink, "SELECT Surname FROM SurnameList WHERE SID = 8 LIMIT 1");
if (!$QryResult) die("Transaction Failure"); 
$ThisSurname = mysqli_fetch_assoc($QryResult)['Surname'];
mysqli_free_result($QryResult);

I think you would be well served to consider classes to handle repeatable logic like this if you are after coding efficiency :).