SQLite and PHP register system not working

Question

This is my registration code using PHP and SQLite. It keeps going to the statement "user already exists" when it certainly does not. I check to see if the username is greater than one in the database (if it exists) and it does not, but if I echo out the count it always says its equal to one...

$checkUser = $db->prepare('
    SELECT COUNT(*) 
    FROM users
    WHERE 
    user = ?
');

$checkUser->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
$checkUser->execute(array($user));


$numrows = count($checkUser);

if ($numrows == 0) {

    try {

        $reg = $db->prepare("
            INSERT
            INTO users
            (user, pass, email)
            VALUES
            ('$user', '$pass', '$email')  
        ");

        $reg->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
        $reg->execute();

    } catch (PDOException $e) {
        print_r($e->getMessage());
    }

    echo ('success...');
}
else {


    die ('user already exists');
}

Answer 1

I don't use SQLite, but you look like your $numrows are just checking that the execute actually ran successfully (boolean true/false). Try updating this bit:

// I like to name "count" otherwise returned as "COUNT(*)" in the array key
$checkUser = $db->prepare('
    SELECT COUNT(*) as count
    FROM users
    WHERE 
    user = ?
');

// Execute with bind
$checkUser->execute(array($user));
// Fetch an associative array
$result =   $checkUser->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
// The count will be here as a numeric
if ($result['count'] == 0) {