[PHP-DEV] my concept ( new PDO FETCH MODE )

[Csonka Titus]

Greetings,

I want to propose a new PDO FETCH MODE.

Whenever I fetch(http://php.net/manual/en/pdostatement.fetch.php) a class, it  
returns the new instance of the requested class or false in any other cases.

However with the new php7.1 return type 
declaration(https://wiki.php.net/rfc/nullable_types) Upon defining a nullable 
class as return type, I need to add extra code at the end of my function if my 
database don't have a row to return.

PDO will return a false, my function will trigger a fatal error.

My proposal is to add a new style of fetch(PDO::FETCH_NULL_IFNODATA), returning 
null if the PDOStatement::fetch has no result.

//this function will trigger a fatal error if the user is not found
function getUserByName($name): ?UserClass{
    $pdo = new PDO(dsn, user, pass, driver_options);
    $sql = "SELECT * FROM user WHERE name = {$pdo->quote($name)}";
    $stmt = $pdo->query($sql);
    $stmt->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_CLASS,'UserClass');

    return $stmt->fetch();
}

//this function will return null representing the absent of user
function getUserByName($name): ?UserClass{
    $pdo = new PDO(dsn, user, pass, driver_options);
    $sql = "SELECT * FROM user WHERE name = {$pdo->quote($name)}";
    $stmt = $pdo->query($sql);
    $stmt->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_CLASS|PDO::FETCH_NULL_IFNODATA,'UserClass');

    return $stmt->fetch();
}

Looking forward to you answer

Best regards
Miklos Csonka