Question

I am assigning a variable a numeric value or writing a NULL to it with an if statement, if it’s 0.00.

When writing to MySQL from my PHP page, I’m trying to pass this value and it always writes 0.00 for NULL. I’m guessing that’s because my insert statement is sending .$price. and it sees it as being in quotes?

If I echo $price before the insert, it shows me that it’s NULL but after the insert statement, it never remains.

How can I insert a NULL.. since I have to use a variable and send a value if there is one?

Answer 1

To insert NULL into your table, you acutally need to pass the string "NULL" into your query, rather than the PHP NULL value. A PHP NULL, if enclosed in single-quotes and passed to the query will be interpreted as a 0.

// If $price is NULL in PHP, set it to the string "NULL"
// Otherwise, set it to the current value of $price, but enclosed in single quotes as '$price'
$price = $price === NULL ? "NULL" : "'$price'";

// Then $price gets passed to your query either as NULL or as the single-quoted $price
mysql_query("INSERT INTO tbl (price) VALUES ($price);");

Of course, you have already called $price = mysql_real_escape_string($price); before this…