PDO Fetch data returns array of string

Question

I am trying to get data from a MySQL database with PDO but unfortunately PDO returns the result as an array of strings. I want to keep the native MySQL data types in the result array.

I have tried setting PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE to both PDO::FETCH_ASSOC AND PDO::FETCH_OBJ but it was still returning INT data as string.

Here is the result of dump:

array (size=1)
  0 => 
    object(stdClass)[27]
      public 'id' => string '3' (length=1)
      public 'avatar' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'fullName' => string 'Mikheil Janiashvili' (length=19)
      public 'email' => string 'xxxxx@yyyyy.com' (length=17)
      public 'phone' => string '23 3537 20 03544' (length=12)
      public 'educationGE' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'educationEN' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'educationRU' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'experienceGE' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'experienceEN' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'experienceRU' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'descriptionGE' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'descriptionEN' => string '' (length=0)
      public 'descriptionRU' => string '' (length=0)

Answer 1

When you instantiate your PDO object, you need to tell it to use MySQL's native prepared queries:

$db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false);

Assuming you're using PHP >= 5.3 you will be using the mysqlnd library, which can return proper data types from prepared queries.

Example:

$ php -a
Interactive shell

php > $db = PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test", "test", "");
php > $res = $db->query("SELECT 1 as num, PI()");
php > var_dump($res->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC));
array(2) {
  ["num"] => string(1) "1"
  ["PI()"] => string(8) "3.141593"
}

php > $db = PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test", "test", "", [PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES=>false]);
php > $res = $db->query("SELECT 1 as num, PI()");
php > var_dump($res->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC));
array(2) {
  ["num"] => int(1)
  ["PI()"] => float(3.141593)
}
php >