MySQL and PHP - insert NULL rather than empty stri

Question

I have a MySQL statement that inserts some variables into the database. I recently added 2 fields which are optional ($intLat, $intLng). Right now, if these values are not entered I pass along an empty string as a value. How do I pass an explicit NULL value to MySQL (if empty)?

$query = "INSERT INTO data (notes, id, filesUploaded, lat, lng, intLat, intLng)
          VALUES ('$notes', '$id', TRIM('$imageUploaded'), '$lat', '$long', 
                  '$intLat', '$intLng')";
mysql_query($query);

Answer 1

This works just fine for me:

INSERT INTO table VALUES ('', NULLIF('$date',''))

(first '' increments id field)

Answer 2

Check the variables before building the query, if they are empty, change them to the string NULL

Answer 3

To pass a NULL to MySQL, you do just that.

INSERT INTO table (field,field2) VALUES (NULL,3)

So, in your code, check if $intLat, $intLng are empty, if they are, use NULL instead of '$intLat' or '$intLng'.

$intLat = !empty($intLat) ? "'$intLat'" : "NULL";
$intLng = !empty($intLng) ? "'$intLng'" : "NULL";

$query = "INSERT INTO data (notes, id, filesUploaded, lat, lng, intLat, intLng)
          VALUES ('$notes', '$id', TRIM('$imageUploaded'), '$lat', '$long', 
                  $intLat, $intLng)";

Answer 4

your query can go as follows:

$query = "INSERT INTO data (notes, id, filesUploaded, lat, lng, intLat, intLng)
      VALUES ('$notes', '$id', TRIM('$imageUploaded'), '$lat', '$lng', '" . ($lat == '')?NULL:$lat . "', '" . ($long == '')?NULL:$long . "')";
mysql_query($query);

Answer 5

For some reason, radhoo's solution wouldn't work for me. When I used the following expression:

$query = "INSERT INTO uradmonitor (db_value1, db_value2) VALUES (".
    (($val1=='')?"NULL":("'".$val1."'")) . ", ".
    (($val2=='')?"NULL":("'".$val2."'")) . 
    ")";

'null' (with quotes) was inserted instead of null without quotes, making it a string instead of an integer. So I finally tried:

$query = "INSERT INTO uradmonitor (db_value1, db_value2) VALUES (".
    (($val1=='')? :("'".$val1."'")) . ", ".
    (($val2=='')? :("'".$val2."'")) . 
    ")";

The blank resulted in the correct null (unquoted) being inserted into the query.

Answer 6

All you have to do is: $variable =NULL; // and pass it in the insert query. This will store the value as NULL in mysql db