Trying to get COUNT(*) from custom content type with EntityFieldQuery

Question

How can I retrieve the 'count(*)' from a query in drupal 7? The query needs to include a custom content type and a custom field.

Notes

• Custom Content Type: employees

• Custom Field Name: field_employees_email

• As a note, I'm looking to add

  WHERE field_employees_email = '[email protected]'

to the query...

So far, I have something like:

$query = new EntityFieldQuery;    

$result = $query
     ->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
     ->propertyCondition('status', 1) // Getting published nodes only.
     ->propertyCondition('type', 'employees') //Getting 'employees' type only.
     // How do I include custom field as part of query?
     ->execute();

Also, is there an easier way than

$total = count($result); 

to return the COUNT(*) from the query?

Answer 1

You can use EntityFieldQuery::count(), as reported in the documentation for EntityFieldQuery::execute().

[The result is] Either a number if count() was called or an array of associative arrays of stub entities.

The code you should use is similar to the following one:

$query = new EntityFieldQuery;

$count = $query->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
  ->entityCondition('bundle', 'employees')
  ->propertyCondition('status', 1) // Getting published nodes only.
  ->count()
  ->execute();

To filter the result by the content type, you need to use EntityFieldQuery::entityCondition('bundle', $content_type).
For conditions on fields, you should use EntityFieldQuery::fieldCondition().