Selecting Data from SQL Database Returns "1"
<p>This is my first SQL Database. I've been able to successfully connect to my server and database. But, when I use a query to select data from one of the columns in my table, it returns the number "1". Why is this?</p>

<pre><code>&lt;?php

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "dbname";

$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

if (!$conn) {
    die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}

$sql = "SELECT Item FROM Items";
$result = $conn-&gt;query($sql);   

echo "&lt;h1&gt;Connected successfully&lt;h1&gt;";
echo "&lt;p class='lead'&gt;" + $result + "&lt;/p&gt;";

$conn-&gt;close();

?&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Here's an image of the table named <code>Items</code></p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QWLoR.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QWLoR.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>This is what shows up on the webpage where it should <code>echo</code> the contents in the <code>item</code> column:</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/DYBjD.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/DYBjD.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>