Get MySQL Query Results as Their Native Data Type?

Question

I have tried fetching MySQL query results using mysql_fetch_row() and mysql_result() and numeric values are being returned as strings.

Is

Answer 1

I wrote a function to circuvent this (for PDO):

/**
 * Converts columns from strings to types according to 
 * PDOStatement::columnMeta
 * 
 * @param PDOStatement $st
 * @param array $assoc returned by PDOStatement::fetch with PDO::FETCH_ASSOC
 * @return copy of $assoc with matching type fields
 */
function convertTypes(PDOStatement $statement, $assoc)
{
    for ($i = 0; $columnMeta = $statement->getColumnMeta($i); $i++)
    {
        $type = $columnMeta['native_type'];

        switch($type)
        {
            case 'DECIMAL':
            case 'TINY':
            case 'SHORT':
            case 'LONG':
            case 'LONGLONG':
            case 'INT24':
                $assoc[$columnMeta['name']] = (int) $assoc[$columnMeta['name']];
                break;
            case 'DATETIME':
            case 'DATE':
            case 'TIMESTAMP':
                $assoc[$columnMeta['name']] = strtotime($assoc[$columnMeta['name']]);
                break;
            // default: keep as string
        }
    }

    return $assoc;
}

Of course the type list are not complete and the conversion is oversimplified, but can be useful for start.