What is the difference between bindParam and bindValue?

Question

What is the difference between PDOStatement::bindParam() and PDOStatement::bindValue()?

Answer 1

For the most common purpose, you should use bindValue.

bindParam has two tricky or unexpected behaviors:

• bindParam(':foo', 4, PDO::PARAM_INT) does not work, as it requires passing a variable (as reference).
• bindParam(':foo', $value, PDO::PARAM_INT) will change $value to string after running execute(). This, of course, can lead to subtle bugs that might be difficult to catch.

Source: http://php.net/manual/en/pdostatement.bindparam.php#94711