MySQL 5.6 C API Developer Guide
Prepared statements transmit data between the client and server using C language variables on the client side that correspond to SQL values on the server side. If there is a mismatch between the C variable type on the client side and the corresponding SQL value type on the server side, MySQL performs implicit type conversions in both directions.
MySQL knows the type code for the SQL value on the server side.
The buffer_type
value in the
MYSQL_BIND
structure indicates the type code
of the C variable that holds the value on the client side. The
two codes together tell MySQL what conversion must be performed,
if any. Here are some examples:
If you use MYSQL_TYPE_LONG
with an
int
variable to pass an integer value to
the server that is to be stored into a
FLOAT
column, MySQL converts
the value to floating-point format before storing it.
If you fetch an SQL MEDIUMINT
column value, but specify a buffer_type
value of MYSQL_TYPE_LONGLONG
and use a C
variable of type long long int
as the
destination buffer, MySQL converts the
MEDIUMINT
value (which
requires less than 8 bytes) for storage into the
long long int
(an 8-byte variable).
If you fetch a numeric column with a value of 255 into a
char[4]
character array and specify a
buffer_type
value of
MYSQL_TYPE_STRING
, the resulting value in
the array is a 4-byte string '255\0'
.
MySQL returns DECIMAL
values
as the string representation of the original server-side
value, which is why the corresponding C type is
char[]
. For example,
12.345
is returned to the client as
'12.345'
. If you specify
MYSQL_TYPE_NEWDECIMAL
and bind a string
buffer to the MYSQL_BIND
structure,
mysql_stmt_fetch()
stores
the value in the buffer as a string without conversion. If
instead you specify a numeric variable and type code,
mysql_stmt_fetch()
converts
the string-format DECIMAL
value to numeric form.
For the MYSQL_TYPE_BIT
type code,
BIT
values are returned into
a string buffer, which is why the corresponding C type is
char[]
. The value represents a bit string
that requires interpretation on the client side. To return
the value as a type that is easier to deal with, you can
cause the value to be cast to integer using either of the
following types of expressions:
SELECT bit_col + 0 FROM t SELECT CAST(bit_col AS UNSIGNED) FROM t
To retrieve the value, bind an integer variable large enough to hold the value and specify the appropriate corresponding integer type code.
Before binding variables to the MYSQL_BIND
structures that are to be used for fetching column values, you
can check the type codes for each column of the result set. This
might be desirable if you want to determine which variable types
would be best to use to avoid type conversions. To get the type
codes, call
mysql_stmt_result_metadata()
after preparing the statement with
mysql_stmt_prepare()
. The
metadata provides access to the type codes for the result set as
described in Section 11.23, “mysql_stmt_result_metadata()”, and
Chapter 5, C API Data Structures.
To determine whether output string values in a result set
returned from the server contain binary or nonbinary data, check
whether the charsetnr
value of the result set
metadata is 63 (see Chapter 5, C API Data Structures). If
so, the character set is binary
, which
indicates binary rather than nonbinary data. This enables you to
distinguish BINARY
from
CHAR
,
VARBINARY
from
VARCHAR
, and the
BLOB
types from the
TEXT
types.
If you cause the max_length
member of the
MYSQL_FIELD
column metadata structures to be
set (by calling
mysql_stmt_attr_set()
), be aware
that the max_length
values for the result set
indicate the lengths of the longest string representation of the
result values, not the lengths of the binary representation.
That is, max_length
does not necessarily
correspond to the size of the buffers needed to fetch the values
with the binary protocol used for prepared statements. Choose
the size of the buffers according to the types of the variables
into which you fetch the values. For example, a
TINYINT
column containing the value -128
might have a max_length
value of 4. But the
binary representation of any TINYINT
value
requires only 1 byte for storage, so you can supply a
signed char
variable in which to store the
value and set is_unsigned
to indicate that
values are signed.
Metadata changes to tables or views referred to by prepared statements are detected and cause automatic repreparation of the statement when it is next executed. For more information, see Caching of Prepared Statements and Stored Programs.