confusing error in INSERT statement

[calebsg]

This MySQL command doesn't quite work:

INSERT INTO employee_info (co_id,co_em_id,em_first_name,em_last_name,em_start_date,em_pos,em_start_date_co,em_addr_1,em_addr_2,em_city,em_prov_id,em_pc,em_fax,em_phone,em_dob,em_email,em_sex,em_status_co,em_pcc,em_fcc,em_ei,em_status_sys) VALUES ('4','2943','Caleb','Alpen',CURDATE(),'Trucker','2001-9-18','Addrss line 1','address ln 2','city','1','S0C 0S0','3063825340','3264425340','1937-03-13','[e-mail]','M','2','123','123','1.3','1')

What happens is that the em_fax field always puts in the same incorrect value of 2147483647 instead of the appropriate fax number passed through from the form. The phone number field (em_phone) works fine and both are INT(11) fields. Any suggestions? This one has me absolutely bam-boozled.

[Anon]

Sounds like an integer overflow occurred somewhere. That number is the maximum value a 4 byte signed can hold.

I suggest storing character data as characters anyway (phone numbers, social security numbers, zipcodes, etc. are all character strings, not integers). Try changing your field to a varchar(12) and make sure your form validation in php or javascript isn't doing something cheesy like validating the field by checking if its a number. That's what regular expressions are for.

[calebsg]

Thanks -- I'll give that a try. At this stage, there is no form validation. I was just trying to get it to the level where all the form variables come through and the INSERT statement works.