Nooby Codeigniter user! MYSQL Query

[eluser]mr daniel[/eluser]
Hullo guys


So I've just been playing around with codeigniter and mysql.
I need to execute the mysql query:

Code:

SELECT COUNT(id) FROM urls;

and want to show the result on the main page of my website.



So I've been trying something like

Code:

<php echo $idcount; ?&gt;

on the website and in my controller, "g.php" I've been using

Code:

$this->view_data['idcount'] = mysql_query(SELECT COUNT(id) FROM urls;);

Is there an easy way to do this?
I've been struggling so far
Any help would be appreciated <3


EDIT: mistyped code