Getting raw SQL query string from PDO prepared statements

Question

Is there a way to get the raw SQL string executed when calling PDOStatement::execute() on a prepared statement? For debugging purposes this would be extremely useful.

Answer 1

I spent a good deal of time researching this situation for my own needs. This and several other SO threads helped me a great deal, so I wanted to share what I came up with.

While having access to the interpolated query string is a significant benefit while troubleshooting, we wanted to be able to maintain a log of only certain queries (therefore, using the database logs for this purpose was not ideal). We also wanted to be able to use the logs to recreate the condition of the tables at any given time, therefore, we needed to make certain the interpolated strings were escaped properly. Finally, we wanted to extend this functionality to our entire code base having to re-write as little of it as possible (deadlines, marketing, and such; you know how it is).

My solution was to extend the functionality of the default PDOStatement object to cache the parameterized values (or references), and when the statement is executed, use the functionality of the PDO object to properly escape the parameters when they are injected back in to the query string. We could then tie in to execute method of the statement object and log the actual query that was executed at that time (or at least as faithful of a reproduction as possible).

As I said, we didn't want to modify the entire code base to add this functionality, so we overwrite the default bindParam() and bindValue() methods of the PDOStatement object, do our caching of the bound data, then call parent::bindParam() or parent::bindValue(). This allowed our existing code base to continue to function as normal.

Finally, when the execute() method is called, we perform our interpolation and provide the resultant string as a new property E_PDOStatement->fullQuery. This can be output to view the query or, for example, written to a log file.

The extension, along with installation and configuration instructions, are available on github:

https://github.com/noahheck/E_PDOStatement

DISCLAIMER:
Obviously, as I mentioned, I wrote this extension. Because it was developed with help from many threads here, I wanted to post my solution here in case anyone else comes across these threads, just as I did.