Function that is supposed to return a value from query

Question

I have this function which I use to get a value from a query. I might be doing something wrong with the execution, or the syntax. When I try to run the query with the data in it, it's fine, but this one returns 0 items.

public function get_modified_event ($type, $id, $employee_id)
        {
            global $dbh;
            $sql =<<<SQL

                    SELECT outlook_id 
                        FROM dba.events
                    WHERE spine_item_type = :type
                    AND spine_id = :id
                    AND employee_id = :employee_id 
SQL;

            $stmt = $dbh->prepare( $sql );
            $stmt->execute( array(
                    'id' => $id,
                    'type' => $type,
                    'employee_id' => $employee_id,

            ) );
                    $rows = $stmt->fetchAll( \PDO::FETCH_ASSOC );
                    return $rows['outlook_id'];
        }

Answer 1

You could try reworking a portion of the code so that it uses this kind of a format:

$stmt = $dbh->prepare( $sql );
if ($stmt->execute( /* your array goes here */ )) {
       $rows = $stmt->fetchAll( PDO::FETCH_ASSOC );
       if ($rows !== FALSE){
                  print_r($rows);
        }
        else 
        if ( $stmt->rowCount() === 0) {
           echo "The info provided is unknown to the database";
        }
 }   

Hopefully you'll get some meaningful results.