How to get total records from Pager

had a quick look through some previous code of mine and found this:

Code:

            
$handle= new PortfolioModel();
                        $mycount= $handle->isEmptyMens();
                        $count= $mycount["COUNT(*)"];
                        if($count ==0)

It was when i was playing with a web for my daughter, fashion web.

now i coudn't find the code for the method isEmptyMens(); its one of my model->method names and will most certainly contain
contain stand model methods for geting data , and in the docs

also what I can say is that

Code:

    $handle= new PortfolioModel();
//here i am instantiating a Model based on CI4 model, where you set allowed fields etc.
//$handle is my  none imagination way of  naming the instance
$mycount= $handle->isEmptyMens();
//this will be using  one of the ci4 methods documented in "modelling data" in the docs
//something probably like findAll() but don't quote me on that , i have a bad memory on which work with objects , those that might use arrays


    $count= $mycount["COUNT(*)"];

in the above i leverage what a CI4 model standard method , in the docs, (modelling data) to get what i want  

I use an sqlite3 database for all my web. That is my approach to getting an actual count from  a class->method() object.

Now it hints to me that I also could find a direct way of using CI4 model and one of its ready methods ,to a get a count THEN. There may very well be a straight forward
way now to use CodeIgniter Model to get a Count. But i've i have shown using some lateral thinking you can get a count using CodeIgniter Model class and its methods.
In later code i just thought horses fore courses and just switched to Query builder to get the job done.

CMS CI4     I use Arch Linux by the way