Catchable fatal error: Object of class PDOStatement could not be converted to string in /home/refined/public_html/refer.php on line 30

Question

I currently am building a small and simple referral system. However I am having trouble trying to return how many referrals one single user has. When a new user registers it sto

Answer 1

Let's analyse your code:

$checknumber = $odb -> prepare("SELECT COUNT('referid') FROM `users` WHERE `ID` = :ID");

... where PDO::prepare() is defined as:

PDOStatement PDO::prepare ( string $statement [, array $driver_options = array() ] )

So it returns an object. But two lines later you try to print the object:

echo($checknumber);

If you check any of the usage examples in the manual you'll see that you need to call one of the PDOStatement methods to extract the query results, e.g.:

prepare($sql, array(PDO::ATTR_CURSOR => PDO::CURSOR_FWDONLY));
$sth->execute(array(':calories' => 150, ':colour' => 'red'));
$red = $sth->fetchAll();

Update: Two more links:

• Available PDOStatement methods
• Arrays in PHP