MySQL - count total number of rows in php

What is the best MySQL command to count the total number of rows in a table without any conditions applied to it? I'm doing this through php, so maybe there is a php function which does this for me? I don't know. Here is an example of my php:

<?php
$con = mysql_connect("server.com","user","pswd");
if (!$con) {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}

mysql_select_db("db", $con);

$result = mysql_query("some command");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);

mysql_close($con);
?>

<?php
$con = mysql_connect("server.com","user","pswd");
if (!$con) {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}

mysql_select_db("db", $con);

$result = mysql_query("select count(1) FROM table");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);

$total = $row[0];
echo "Total rows: " . $total;

mysql_close($con);
?>

Either use COUNT in your MySQL query or do a SELECT * FROM table and do:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table");
$rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
echo "There are " . $rows . " rows in my table.";

mysqli_num_rows is used in php 5 and above.

e.g

<?php
$con=mysqli_connect("localhost","my_user","my_password","my_db");
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
  {
  echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
  }

$sql="SELECT Lastname,Age FROM Persons ORDER BY Lastname";

if ($result=mysqli_query($con,$sql))
  {
  // Return the number of rows in result set
  $rowcount=mysqli_num_rows($result);
  printf("Result set has %d rows.\n",$rowcount);
  // Free result set
  mysqli_free_result($result);
  }
mysqli_close($con);
?>

Use COUNT in a SELECT query.

$result = mysql_query('SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table');
$num_rows = mysql_result($result, 0, 0);