Display while loop variable before the loop executes - wordpress

Question

So I'm using an ACF repeater to populate content. I'd like to display the total count of items at the top of the block before the while loop has even executed. I can echo $counter at the bottom of the block, and it's great. But obviously, before anything runs, it's null, or 0 for obvious reasons. I'm just not sure how to show $counter outside of the loop before the loop has even ran.
<div class="col-sm-12 text-left">
<p><strong>Total Videos:</strong>
<?php var_dump($counter); ?>
</p>
</div>
<?php if ( have_rows( 'choir_videos' ) ) :
$counter = 0;
while ( have_rows( 'choir_videos' ) ) : the_row();
$counter++;
?>
```
html block
```
<?php
endwhile; endif;
?>
<div class="col-sm-12 text-left">
<p><strong>Total Videos:</strong>
<?php echo $counter ?>
</p>
</div>
Currently, $counter is working at the bottom of the executed code, as expected. the $counter at the top is returning NULL, as expected since $counter is not a thing yet. Regardless of when and how I set $counter = 0, I can't get the number I need to display.

Answer 1

you have to get the field object and than count the rows. example:
$object = get_field('choir_videos');
$item_count = count($object);
maybe you want to check if the object is an array before you count, because it can be an string, int or an array.
edit: if you want to load an object from another post, you must assign the post id to the get_field() method - just check the documentatin
Documentation for the get_field() method:
get_field() documentiation
Documentation for the count() method:
php count()

Answer 2

So, quite embarrassing. I simply just rant through the while loop and counted how many times it ran, then echoed that and it worked fine. Holy cow, my first SO question and it was the SIMPLEST thing. Ugh.
<p><strong>Total Videos:</strong>
<?php
$vid_total = 0;
while ( have_rows( 'choir_videos' ) ) : the_row();
$vid_total++;
endwhile;
?>
<?php echo $vid_total ?>
</p>