Reading datypes correctly by PHP from Postgres

Question

How do you compile integer data in Postgres by PHP?

My integers are string as the following show by var_dump ( $_SESSION )

  'logged_in' => int 1
  'user_id' => string '9' (length=1)                 // should be int
  'a_moderator' => string '0' (length=1)             // should be int

I compile the values by the following code which obviously is the source of the problem after pg_prepare and pg_execute.

    while ( $row = pg_fetch_array( $result ) ) { 
        $user_id = $row['user_id'];
    }

Answer 1

You can convert strings to integers using intval:

$str = "5";
$num = intval($str);

or by type coercion:

$str = "5";
$num = (int) $str;

//this works too
$num = (integer) $str;

some test code:

<?php
   $str = "10";
   $num = intval($str);
   //$num = (int)$str;

   if ($str === 10) echo "String";
   if ($num === 10) echo "Integer";
?>

Further reading:

Type Jugging

Answer 2

It's ordinary for PHP database extensions to return all data types as string, because some SQL data types cannot be represented in PHP native data types.

Example: PostgreSQL BIGINT (8-byte integer data type) would overflow the int PHP type (unless PHP is compiled with 64-bit support), and be cast as float which might lose exactness.