PHP PDO returning single row

If you want just a single field, you could use fetchColumn instead of fetch - http://www.php.net/manual/en/pdostatement.fetchcolumn.php

Just fetch. only gets one row. So no foreach loop needed :D

$row  = $STH -> fetch();

example (ty northkildonan):

$id = 4;
$stmt = $dbh->prepare("SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE id=? LIMIT 1"); 
$stmt->execute([$id]); 
$row = $stmt->fetch();

$DBH = new PDO( "connection string goes here" );
$STH - $DBH -> prepare( "select figure from table1 ORDER BY x LIMIT 1" );

$STH -> execute();
$result = $STH -> fetch();
echo $result ["figure"];

$DBH = null;

You can use fetch and LIMIT together. LIMIT has the effect that the database returns only one entry so PHP has to handle very less data. With fetch you get the first (and only) result entry from the database reponse.

You can do more optimizing by setting the fetching type, see http://www.php.net/manual/de/pdostatement.fetch.php. If you access it only via column names you need to numbered array.

Be aware of the ORDER clause. Use ORDER or WHERE to get the needed row. Otherwise you will get the first row in the table alle the time.

Did you try:

$DBH = new PDO( "connection string goes here" );
$row = $DBH->query( "select figure from table1" )->fetch();
echo $row["figure"];
$DBH = null;