mysqli_query - return values
mysqli, php
Solution
Per the manual:
Returns FALSE on failure. For successful SELECT, SHOW, DESCRIBE or EXPLAIN queries mysqli_query() will return a mysqli_result object. For other successful queries mysqli_query() will return TRUE.
A query that runs but returns no results is still considered a "successful query", since the query did run in the database and an empty result set is a legitimate response. This means the query will still return a `mysqli_result` object, and if you check its row count (either via `$result->num_rows` in the object-oriented style or `mysqli_num_rows($result)` in the procedural style) it will return 0.
Problem
I am using the PHP function `mysqli_query` to run a `SELECT` query. What does `mysqli_query` return if the query runs successfully, but the query finds no matches?