Umm... You're really overcomplicating the matter
You don't need to fetch anything from the database at all. You have the views with a default value of 0 so all you need to do is.
- PHP: Select all
// Update the views
mysql_query("UPDATE content SET views = views+1 WHERE contentid=$contentid");
// Then retrieve the data
$result = mysql_query("SELECT views FROM content WHERE contentid=$contentid");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
// echo views before
echo $row['views']-1;
// echo views after
echo $row['views'];
That will update it without having to bring
PHP into the story at all
MYSQL is much quicker than
PHP so whenever you can use mysql's functions and logic, use it.