Getting the number of rows considering a time frame - cakephp

Question

I want to get the number of rows of a certain table considering a time frame.
I'm using CakePHP 3.7.
Here you can see my code (from the controller class) :
public function nbOfDefense($dateIn, $dateOut){
if($dateIn!=null && $dateFin!=null){
$conditions = array('thesis.date_end BETWEEN ? and ?' => array($dateIn, $dateOut));
$query = $this->Thesis->find('all',
array('conditions'=>$conditions));
die(strval($query->count()));
return $query;
}else{
$query = $this->Thesis->find('all');
die(strval($query->count()));
return $query->count();
}
}
I'm testing my function through my browser using this URL :
http://localhost:8888/thesis/nbOfDefense/2003-02-01/2019-04-13
What I want my function to do, is to, get in parameters two dates :
If those two dates are not null, you get the number of rows that between the two dates considering a date stored in the table you're consulting.
If the dates are null, then you get the total number of rows of the table.
And return an int, which is the number of rows that are between those two dates.
I feel like the problem here is how I handle my condition, because counting the total number of rows works perfectly (the else part of the code).
The error I have right now with this code is the following :
Cannot convert value of type array to string
it's pointing to this line :
die(strval($query->count()));
I guess the count function returns an array (weird because it doesn't when I count all rows without conditions). I also tried this :
die(strval(sizeof($query->count())));
But I get the same error as before (cannot convert array to string)
I must be missing something but I don't know what...

Answer 1

Try:
use Cake\ORM\Query;
use Cake\Database\Expression\QueryExpression;
class MyController extend AppController
{
public function nbOfDefense($dateIn = null, $dateOut = null)
{
$query = $this->Thesis->find();
if ($dateIn && $dateOut) {
$query->where(function (QueryExpression $exp, Query $q) use ($dateIn, $dateOut) {
return $exp->between('date_end', $dateIn, $dateOut);
});
}
$count = $query->count();
$this->set(compact('query', 'count'));
}
// ..
}
and read:
https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/query-builder.html
https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/retrieving-data-and-resultsets.html