Varchar vs. Int

[danielle]

My first assignment when I started this job was to re-do the sign-in procedure for new employees. I was new to PHP and did kind of a messy job.

The problem I run into now is that when I wrote the insert to the employee table I made the ssn a varchar:
"insert into employ (ssn) values ('$ssn_in')"

and the previous version had it as an int:
"insert into employ (ssn) values ($ssn_in)"
(without the single quote)

is there a query or php function that will test the fields to see if they are numeric or varchar

i tried this :
while ($a=mysql_fetch_array($r)) {
if (is_string($a[ssn])) {
$var++;
}
if (is_numeric($a[ssn])) {
$num++;
}
echo "<p>$a[ssn]<br>NUMERIC: $num <br>VARCHAR: $var";
}

all the fields tested true for both numeric and string
the field descripion in the database is varchar(10)

i imagine this is a really dumb post :rolleyes:
any help appreciated

[Sxooter]

Easiest way is to issue a query like this:

select * from some_table limit 1;

then use

mysql_field_type
mysql_field_name
to iterate across the fields to see what their name and type is.

[tomhath]

You have confused two things.

Mysql has the data stored as a varchar(10). That's good, SSNs are strings and should be stored as such.

Php is looking at the contents of a variable and telling you it's a string (not an object, null, or array, etc), and that the string can be converted to a number if you want.

I don't see any problem with what you have.