Question

When using mysql_fetch_assoc in PHP, how can I make it return the correct data types? Right now it appears to convert everything to strings, I’d prefer if it left the Ints as Ints, and somehow designated the Date/Time as either Object or somehow different than strings.

The reason for this is that I am using PHP as a backend to a Flex application, and Flex has some features such as automatically detecting return types, which don’t work that well if everything comes in as a string.

Answer 1

I think a good strategy here is to programatically determine the datatype of each column in a table, and cast the returned results accordingly. This will allow you to interact with your database in a more consistent and simple manner while still giving you the control you need to have your variables storing the correct datatype.

One possible solution: You could use mysql_fetch_field() to get an object that holds meta-data about the table column and then cast your string back to the desired type.

//run query and get field information about the row in the table
$meta = mysql_fetch_field($result, $i);

//get the field type of the current column
$fieldType = $meta->type

A full example can be found here: https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-fetch-field.php

Since PHP is loosely typed, you should have a relatively easy time with this.

If you are using OO (object-oriented) techniques, you could create a class with this functionality in the setter() methods so you don’t have to have duplicate code.