Question

I have an integer column in a table and when I do a comparison the following code seems to work.

$myLimit = 10;
$sth = $db->prepare("SELECT * FROM table WHERE number<:myLimit");
$sth->bindParam(':myLimit',$myLimit); // default datatype is PDO::PARAM_STR
$sth->execute();
$result = $sth->fetchAll();

Should I be using PDO::PARAM_INT for the third parameter for bindParam?
Also what about real numbers I can’t use PDO::PARAM_INT for them as it will round them.

Answer 1

Number handling in PHP is notoriously bad. To pass big numbers around, my advice would be to keep them as strings.

Edit I’ve just tested the number handling; PARAM_INT works fine for large numeric strings, so you don’t have to use PARAM_INT but there’s no harm in being precise 🙂

As for floats, you should pass them using PARAM_STR to massively lose precision.