CodeIgniter Select Query

use Result Rows.
row() method returns a single result row.

$id = $this 
    -> db
    -> select('id')
    -> where('email', $email)
    -> limit(1)
    -> get('users')
    -> row();

then, you can simply use as you want. :)

echo "ID is" . $id;

Thats quite simple. For example, here is a random code of mine:

function news_get_by_id ( $news_id )
{

    $this->db->select('*');
    $this->db->select("DATE_FORMAT( date, '%d.%m.%Y' ) as date_human",  FALSE );
    $this->db->select("DATE_FORMAT( date, '%H:%i') as time_human",      FALSE );


    $this->db->from('news');

    $this->db->where('news_id', $news_id );


    $query = $this->db->get();

    if ( $query->num_rows() > 0 )
    {
        $row = $query->row_array();
        return $row;
    }

}   

This will return the "row" you selected as an array so you can access it like:

$array = news_get_by_id ( 1 );
echo $array['date_human'];

I also would strongly advise, not to chain the query like you do. Always have them separately like in my code, which is clearly a lot easier to read.

Please also note that if you specify the table name in from(), you call the get() function without a parameter.

If you did not understand, feel free to ask :)

one short way would be

$id = $this -> db
       -> select('id')
       -> where('email', $email)
       -> limit(1)
       -> get('users')
       -> row()
       ->id;
echo "ID is ".$id;