query result array, each row's column field to string

Question

I'm using CodeIgniter and I wrote the following code in one of my model (.php file) to do preg_split operation on one column value for each rows matching the query.

For context, I have no idea how to do debugging such backend operation and am lost / afraid of blowing up the database. The problem is I don't know if I'm doing the preg_split operation on a string or an array value.

The field type for fruits column is varchar(32) which is a string, but would calling $row['fruits'] really return a pure string?

$query = $this->db->query($sql);
foreach ($query->result_array() as $row) {
    //  theoretically $s = 'apple banana'
    $s = $row['fruits'];
    //  theoretically parts[0]=apple, parts[1]=banana
    $parts = preg_split('/\s+/', $s); 
}

So what is your question? How to do debugging? var_dump, print_r. Or what? — u_mulder
– u_mulder, Commented Jul 30, 2015 at 19:30

ted · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-30 19:33:06Z

2

If you do not want to try and debug because you're afraid of losing your database :

1) you're gonna have a bad time going on so you should find a way not to jeopardize your data while testing

2) you can try and enforce strings: $s = (string) $row['fruits']; even if it should already be a string

answered Jul 30, 2015 at 19:33

ted

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Comments

chris85 · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-30 20:09:31Z

1

In PHP database return values are strings (variants), so $row["fruits"] would return a string even if the MySQL datatype was an integer you would still get a valid string. Because PHP is not strongly typed, it does a lot of automatic casting for you meaning you can use results as integers or floats or strings (and interchangeably) in your code.

One final point of note: PHP will return (MySQL)NULL values as an empty string "".

Hope this helps!

edited Jul 30, 2015 at 20:09

chris85

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answered Jul 30, 2015 at 19:31

SteJ

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