How to get an integer from MySQL as integer in PHP?

Well you can do Type casting to convert the type of returned data using PHP.

You can take a look at int, intval to convert to integers. You may also use settype:

settype($foo, "array");
settype($foo, "bool");
settype($foo, "boolean");
settype($foo, "float");
settype($foo, "int");
settype($foo, "integer");
settype($foo, "null");
settype($foo, "object");
settype($foo, "string");

Another way would be:

$foo = (array)$foo;
$foo = (b)$foo;      // from PHP 5.2.1
$foo = (binary)$foo; // from PHP 5.2.1
$foo = (bool)$foo;
$foo = (boolean)$foo;
$foo = (double)$foo;
$foo = (float)$foo;
$foo = (int)$foo;
$foo = (integer)$foo;
$foo = (object)$foo;
$foo = (real)$foo;
$foo = (string)$foo;

In MySQLi use bind_result: it sets the correct type and handles NULL.

If you are running Ubuntu:

sudo  apt-get remove php5-mysql
sudo  apt-get install php5-mysqlnd
sudo service apache2 restart

You could use type casting once you've pulled the data from your MySQL database

$row['field'] = (int)$row['field'];

As PHP isn't a strongly typed language, this is somewhat meaningless, but you could of course simply cast the field in question to an int via settype, etc. prior to usage.

Irrespective, there's no way (that I know of) to maintain this "type" information automatically.

PHP's default library for MySQL doesn't have any options of this kind. Use type casting like (int) or intval, (float) etc

in php, you can use ([type]) to make sure $something was integer , this help sql injection if you khow about it.

ex:

(int) $something;

I don't know in what context you asked this question. Because the data type of a php variable is dependent on what data type a column in your table has. If the column has data type "int" in mysql, you get an integer in php (not a string).

But anyways, you can use either is_numeric(), is_int() or gettype() php functions to know the data type of a returned value from Mysql. The problem with is_numeric() is that it returns true even if a variable contains a numeric string e.g. "2". But gettype() will return "string" and is_int() will always return false in the example mentioned i.e. "2".

Once you know the data type of a returned value you can bind the php variable to maintain that type by type casting like this:

// Suppose this is the returned value from mysql and
// you do not know its data type.
$foo = "2";

if (gettype($foo) == "string"){
    $foo = (string) $foo;
}

You can make several checks for what data type the variable has and then cast it accordingly.

I hope this reply would be helpful. Good luck! :)

If you want to get the values ordening by Price, you can change the Data Type to FLOAT from column (ex: price)

EX:

TABLE eletronics

price        id
----------------
55.90        1
40.33        2
10.60        3
1596.90      4
56.90        5

PHP:

$sql = $pdo->query("SELECT * FROM eletronics ORDER BY price DESC");

//result

1596.90      4
56.90        5
55.90        1
40.33        2
10.60        3

//The order is being per prices //OBS: You can change the dots with "," using the str_replace() //result: 1596,90 - 56,90 - 55,90 - 40,33 - 10,60 etc.