> And remember "0 as a number is as important as any other number".
I wish the rest of the world saw it that way! But not so...
You may want to look at MySQL's IS_NULL function for retrieving data. Other
than that, I don't have any good advice. It seems that if you retrieve a
NULL from the database and try to assign it to a PHP variable, that variable
gets destroyed. AFAIK, yes, you need a bunch of data checks, both putting
data in and pulling it back out.
Kirk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 8:59 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PHP] Getting my head around nulls.
>
>
> First recap (been doing RDBMS stuff for over 10 years so
> reckon this is
> correct). Nulls and blank are NOT the same in RDBMS (in fact
> there are
> actually several types of nulls). MySQL implements this
> correctly (Unlike
> Oracle which treats null and blank the same). Up to now I am
> OK but when
> it comes to codeing in PHP I am not to sure about best practice.
>
> The app I am working on for number datatypes inserts 0 if no data is
> entered in form. I can see why, I am inserting a blank into
> the database
> and MySQL goes (Hang on this is a number fields and as you are not
> inserting NULL you obviously mean zero). So I guess I need to do some
> conditional stuff so the blanks are not actually inserted or
> put null into
> the PHP variable and insert this (Can PHP vars be null but
> exist?). Or is
> their another option?
>
> The second half of the issue is getting data from the
> database. I added a
> couple of columns to database but then I tried to retrieve them as
> $row[index]. I got a variable x douse not exist error. This
> really through
> me until I realised it was because the value in the database
> was null and
> it kind of makes sense not to create the var for nulls
> (although it makes
> coding a pig). So again, it seems I need to do a lot of isset() stuff
> which is going to be a pain. Any other insight.
>
> Nulls with varchar/char types are not so much of a problem as
> long as you
> don't mind all fields in the database being blank rather than
> null after
> you first insert data into them.
>
> It would be good to get peoples advice on this.
>
> And remember "0 as a number is as important as any other number".
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