Question

Do variables passed to bindParam need to be initialized?

EDIT: REAL USE CASE

$user = 0; //IS THIS REQUIRED?
$stmt = $db->prepare("SELECT * FROM Blah WHERE something=?");
$stmt->bindParam(0, $user);
foreach($array as $user)
   $stmt->execute();

Answer 1

It depends on what kind of param you bind. If it’s an out parameter you don’t need to initialize it. If it’s an in or inout parameter you need to initialize it for obvious reasons.

In your case you should really initialize it since you are using it in the WHERE part, i.e. as an in parameter.

From the docs:

bool PDOStatement::bindParam(mixed $parameter, mixed &$variable, ...)

variable– Name of the PHP variable to bind to the SQL statement parameter.