Database Type Casting Per Database Connection

Created on 31 March 2009, about 16 years ago

Updated 31 March 2025, 2 days ago

For some reason lately, I've been looking at alot of bugs related to casting column values from one type to another. Its seems like a hole in Drupal that hasn't been addressed yet. Mainly because, what mysql and postgresql can CAST to are different and what is returned is different.
Example:

mysql> select cast(57 as char);
+------------------+
| cast(57 as char) |
+------------------+
| 57               | 
+------------------+

psql> select CAST(57 AS CHAR);
 bpchar 
--------
 5
(1 row)

psql> select CAST(57 AS VARCHAR);
 varchar 
---------
 57
(1 row)

I understand that there is only so much we can do - we can't turn lead to gold. But we can do it better.

I suggest we get the Database layer, somewhere (schema?), to do the work and CAST accordingly using DatabaseSchema::getFieldTypeMap()

class DatabaseSchema_pgsql extends DatabaseSchema {
     //....
     public function cast($column_name, $type) {
         $map = $this->getFieldTypeMap();
         if (array_key_exists($type, $map)) {
              $type = $map[$type];
         }
          if (strpos($type, 'serial') !== FALSE) {
               $type = 'int';
          }
          return 'CAST(' . $column_name . ' AS ' . $type . ')';
     }
     //....
}

✨ Feature request

Status

Postponed: needs info

Version

11.0 🔥

Component

database system

Created by

🇳🇿New Zealand Josh Waihi

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Comment 2 days ago →
🇺🇸United States smustgrave
Thank you for sharing your idea for improving Drupal.

We are working to decide if this proposal meets the Criteria for evaluating proposed changes. There hasn't been any discussion here for over 8 years which suggests that this has either been implemented or there is no community support. Your thoughts on this will allow a decision to be made.

Since we need more information to move forward with this issue, the status is now Postponed (maintainer needs more info). If we don't receive additional information to help with the issue, it may be closed after three months.

Thanks!
Comment 2 days ago →
🇨🇦Canada Liam Morland Ontario, CA 🇨🇦
I can see this being a useful improvement to the database API. There is CastSqlInterface, but it only supports one cast.

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