Question

If I define a column in a mysql database as type int, my queries always return the values as type string.

Is there a way of retreiving the right type?

Answer 1

Yes, using PDO and the mysqlnd driver you can retrieve integers as type(int).

e.g.

<?php
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test;charset=utf8', 'localonly', 'localonly');
$pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
$pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false);
setup($pdo);

foreach( $pdo->query('SELECT * FROM soFoo', PDO::FETCH_ASSOC) as $row ) {
    var_dump($row);
}

function setup($pdo) {
    $pdo->exec('CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE soFoo (
        id int auto_increment,
        s varchar(32),
        t datetime,
        primary key(id)
    )');

    $pdo->exec("INSERT INTO soFoo (s,t) VALUES ('abc', Now()), (NULL, Now())");
}

prints

array(3) {
  ["id"]=>
  int(1)
  ["s"]=>
  string(3) "abc"
  ["t"]=>
  string(19) "2011-11-16 13:34:27"
}
array(3) {
  ["id"]=>
  int(2)
  ["s"]=>
  NULL
  ["t"]=>
  string(19) "2011-11-16 13:34:27"
}

on my machine. As you can see the id is returned as an integer.