Alternative for count() function?

[vangilsweb]

Dear phpfreaks-members,

 

We have a webshop. For this webshop we use Magento. On our website we want to display a list with all our active manufacturers (manufacturers that contain products).

 

1. we put all our products in de variable $products

2. we apply a filter on this variable to select only the products from a specific manufacturer

3. we count the number of products that are in the variable $products

4. if the variable contains 1 or more products, we display the manufacturer

 

But loading this page takes a very long time, because of the counting (count()-function) of all the manufacturers.

Is there an alternative for this code? Because we only want to know if the number of products is not 0. The exact number of products we don't have to know.

 

<?php
$products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection();
$products->addAttributeToFilter('manufacturer',$item->getOptionId());
?>

<?php if ($products->count()>0):?>
[code for showing manufacturer]
?>

 

Thank you in advance!!!

[vangilsweb]

solved it like this:

 

instead of:

<?php if ($products->count()>0):?> code...

 

 

use this:

<?php if (!$products->count()):?> no code...
<?php else : ?> code...