select the rows affected by an update

Question

If I have a table with this fields:

int:id_account
int:session
string:password

Now for a login statement I run this sql UPDATE command:

UPDATE tbl_name
SET session = session + 1
WHERE id_account = 17 AND password = 'apple'

Then I check if a row was affected, and if one indeed was affected I know that the password was correct.

Next what I want to do is retrieve all the info of this affected row so I'll have the rest of the fields info.
I can use a simple SELECT statement but I'm sure I'm missing something here, there must be a neater way you gurus know, and going to tell me about (:
Besides it bothered me since the first login sql statement I ever written.

Is there any performance-wise way to combine a SELECT into an UPDATE if the UPDATE did update a row?
Or am I better leaving it simple with two statements? Atomicity isn't needed, so I might better stay away from table locks for example, no?

Answer 1

You should use the same WHERE statement for SELECT. It will return the modified rows, because your UPDATE did not change any columns used for lookup:

UPDATE tbl_name
SET session = session + 1
WHERE id_account = 17 AND password = 'apple';

SELECT *
FROM tbl_name
WHERE id_account = 17 AND password = 'apple';

An advice: never store passwords as plain text! Use a hash function, like this:

MD5('apple')

Answer 2

There is ROW_COUNT() (do read about details in the docs).

Following up by SQL is ok and simple (which is always good), but it might unnecessary stress the system.