Okay, but based on running rowCount(), when the rowCount is 1, it runs through the first if statement. If it is 0, then it runs into the else statement.

What I am trying to understand is how is it telling itself that if $users (which contains a login and password returned by the table if the user exists), then run through the if statement.

If after running the userid and password by the user do not return a match after the query, (i.e. rowCount = 0), then go into the else statement.

One quick question I got just for the purpose of understand.

After fetching the $users, it returns Array.

So why is it that when I have

if($users) 
{ //only is executed if the returned result is in the array
}
else
{
 // only executes when result is not in the array (i.e. incorrect login credentials)
}

As far as i understood, the select statement checks if the userid and password are in the table. Then the next line creates the PDO object. Then you fetch the rows. From there, how does if($users) only work with valid credentials and the else {} automatically do the invalid credentials.

FINALLY!!

Yeah, I quoted the strings literally RIGHT BEFORE you posted mate and that resolved thing issue!

Thanks a ton guys

The var_dump and rowCount() are two methods I will never forget!!!

Hours of stupid troubleshooting now worth while!

Okay, so I just ran the vardump code you mentioned, and it returned bool(false) which I assume implies or confirms that the query is returning false.

So I changed the query to just SELECT * FROM table1; and the vardump return an object. So the error has to do with checking the username and password which I am getting from the login page with the following:

if(isset($_GET['submitCredentialsBtn']))
	{
		
		//get the data from the Login.php form
		$userIDs=$_GET['user'];
		$passwordIDs=$_GET['password'];
	}

and the original query which returned false was

SELECT * FROM gautad WHERE student_id=$userIDs AND password=$passwordIDs

Do you perhaps see an issue which I am missing

After doing what you just suggested, I got another error:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column '$userIDs' in 'where clause'' in C:\xampp\htdocs\assign3\AuthLogin.php:34 Stack trace: #0 [file]: PDO->query('SELECT * FROM g...') #1 {main} thrown in [file] on line 34