Sphinx allows fetching statistical information about last performed query via SHOW META SphinxQL statement.
This information is commonly used to get total count of rows in the index without extra SELECT COUNT(*) ... query.
Although you can always run such query manually, yii\sphinx\Query allows you to do this automatically without extra efforts.
All you need to do is enable yii\sphinx\Query::showMeta and use yii\sphinx\Query::search() to fetch all rows and
meta information:
$query = new Query();
$results = $query->from('idx_item')
->match('foo')
->showMeta(true) // enable automatic 'SHOW META' query
->search(); // retrieve all rows and META information
$items = $results['hits'];
$meta = $results['meta'];
$totalItemCount = $results['meta']['total'];
Note: Total item count that can be extracted from 'meta' is limited to
max_matchessphinx option. If your index contains more records thanmax_matchesvalue (usually - 1000), you should either raise upmax_matchesvia Query::options or use Query::count() to retrieve records count.