需要使用pdo在sql db中检索单个单元格

I want to put the value of count into a variable and display it on the page.

here's my code:

<?php 

try {
$pdo = new PDO('Database info');
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    exit('Database error.');
}



        $query = $pdo->prepare("select count from counter where count_id=1");
        $query->execute();

        return $query;

        echo $query;

?>

This isn't working... any suggestions on how i should change this to get the count to display in a variable?

Thanks.

Change to:

    $query = $pdo->prepare("select count(*) from counter where count_id=1");
    $query->execute();
    $count = $query->fetchColumn();
    echo $count;

Modify the query as follows

$count = $con->query("SELECT COUNT(*) as num from counter where count_id=1")
         ->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

echo  $count['num'];