Trying to get COUNT(*) from custom content type with EntityFieldQuery How can I retrieve the 'count(*)' from a query in drupal 7?  The query needs to include a custom content type and a custom field.

Notes


Custom Content Type: employees
Custom Field Name: field_employees_email
As a note, I'm looking to add  

WHERE field_employees_email = 'example@example.com'


to the query...

So far, I have something like: 

$query = new EntityFieldQuery;    

$result = $query
     -&gt;entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
     -&gt;propertyCondition('status', 1) // Getting published nodes only.
     -&gt;propertyCondition('type', 'employees') //Getting 'employees' type only.
     // How do I include custom field as part of query?
     -&gt;execute();


Also, is there an easier way than 

$total = count($result); 


to return the COUNT(*) from the query?
You can use EntityFieldQuery::count(), as reported in the documentation for EntityFieldQuery::execute().


  [The result is] Either a number if count() was called or an array of associative arrays of stub entities.


The code you should use is similar to the following one:

$query = new EntityFieldQuery;

$count = $query-&gt;entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
  -&gt;entityCondition('bundle', 'employees')
  -&gt;propertyCondition('status', 1) // Getting published nodes only.
  -&gt;count()
  -&gt;execute();


To filter the result by the content type, you need to use EntityFieldQuery::entityCondition('bundle', $content_type).
For conditions on fields, you should use EntityFieldQuery::fieldCondition().