dealing with no records returned

[rowbeast]

Hey All,

I'm setting up a column in DB that gets populated by a number incremented by
1, based on the last column value entered.
My problem happend when there are no prior records in the table that match my
select criteria from the query that determines the number to increment. I
thought using an if statement with the recordset keywork would work, but its
throwing an error that seems to make no sense. Please take a look at the code
below if you dont mind and see if there is something blatently wrong.... (it
may be my logic behind getting the last number too...)

The error i get is: the value "" cannot be converted to a number
and it references this line: <cfset new_sort_id = #getMaxsort.maxsortID# + 1>


Here is my code:
<cfquery datasource="####" name="getMaxsort">
SELECT MAX(sort_id) as maxsortID FROM pages WHERE iid = #form.iid#
</cfquery>

<cfif getMaxsort.recordcount NEQ 0>
<cfset new_sort_id = #getMaxsort.maxsortID# + 1>
<cfelse>
<cfset new_sort_id = 1>
</cfif>

[mxstu]

If there are no records in the table, SELECT MAX(sort_id) will return NULL.
This "null" is converted to an empty string in CF. Since an empty string is
not a number, CF complains when you try to add "+1"

<cfset new_sort_id = #getMaxsort.maxsortID# + 1>

Use the val() function. It will convert the empty string to zero. However,
using an auto incrementing id column would probably be easier than doing this
all manually.

<cfset new_sort_id = val(getMaxsort.maxsortID) + 1>

[rowbeast]

thanks Stu, that makes total sense!
I am not using an autoincrementing field as I will be modifing the values at a
later time with a different query for sorting records, but thanks for the
suggestion!