Question

I have created the following drop down for my front-end webpage:

<select>
   <option value="All">All</option>
   <option value="carer">Carer</option>
   <option value="childminder">Childminder</option>
   <option value="children_socialcare">Children Social Care</option>
   <option value="creche">Creche</option>
</select>

I’ve set up the mysql database to have all the option values as fields:

Type=INT(1) Null=Yes; Default=Null

I have set these as integers as I’m copying in data from a word form where the select options are checkboxes.

mysql table:

mysql> family_support;
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field   | Type        | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| carer   | int(1)      | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+---------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

Although tideous is it okay to use integers in this way (not just for numeric values)?

Answer 1

I think the questions is: Should I use integers for saving boolean values?

Yes you should. I suggest to use TINYINT(1) NOT NULL. Use the values 1 (TRUE/selected/checked) and 0 (FALSE/not selected/not checked).

In newer MySQL releases you can use the the field type BOOL/BOOLEAN, which is just an alias for TINYINT(1).

See here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/numeric-type-overview.html