Question

I’m trying to get a blob field returned to php as a varchar.

The field is a blob named “ssn”.

If I do:

select cast(ssn as char) from staff

I get a bunch of entries (with what appears to be garbage that messes with my javascript).

I don’t even know the column name to reference them.

If I try to grab it in PHP using thusly:

mysql_result( $result, $index, "ssn" )

I get:

… ssn not found in MySQL result …

Any suggestions?

How do I avoid getting garbage back? Is it just that my client’s ssn’s are scrambled so I can’t see them? Are there similar types I should consider casting to? And how do I reference it in my mysql_result() call?

Answer 1

You can give columns aliases like this:

SELECT cast(ssn AS char) AS ssn_c FROM staff

Then you can use ssn_c to refer to the column.