How do you return rows from Mysql based on highest value in table column?

Question

I have a function that is supposed to search the db for the highest 'score'. The Db is structured like this:

----------------------------------------
|  id  |  UrlId  |  Article  |  Score  |
----------------------------------------

I can get the highest score correctly, but I do not know how to return the full object based on the highest score. I am reluctant to loop through the entire table and test the values of 'score' to see which is the highest (although as I type that I suspect I am doing it anyway) because the db will potentially have 10000's of records. I am sure that this is dead simple, but I have "the dumb and I cant brain today" Does anyone know a more elegant solution?

My end result would have to be something like this: if there are 4 UrlId;s with the same top score, the user would need to see:

UrlId example1 20(score)

UrlId example2 20(score)

UrlId example3 20(score)

UrlId example4 20(score)

all other results would not be displayed.

function gethappiestBlog() {
  $happiestBlogs = /* This is the data that I loop through, this is correct */
  $happinessArray = array();
  foreach($happiestBlogs as $happiestBlog) {
    $happinessArray[]= $happiestBlog->Score;
  }
  $maxHappy = max($happinessArray);
  echo $maxHappy; 
}

Answer 1

SELECT fieldlist
FROM `tableName`
WHERE `score` = (SELECT MAX(`score`) FROM `tableName`)

Answer 2

Couldn't you use a query?

SELECT * 
  FROM table_name 
 ORDER BY score 
  DESC LIMIT 1;

If you need multiple scores, you could then use a subquery:

SELECT * 
  FROM table_name 
 WHERE score = 
       (SELECT score
          FROM table_name 
         ORDER BY score 
          DESC LIMIT 1;
       );

Answer 3

Try this.

$dbh=new PDO(DSN,USERNAME,PASSWORD);
$stmt=$dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME ORDER BY Score DESC");
$stmt->execute();
while($happiestBlog=$stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_OBJ)):

    echo $happiestBlog->Score;

endwhile;

Here ORDER BY Score DESC fetch the the row first ehich has highest Score.