advanced patterns when using PDO with MySQL and prepared statements in PHP 8.1
I'm optimizing some code but I'm working with an scenario with PDO when executing prepared statements in PHP 8.1... I have a simple data insertion logic, but I keep getting the behavior `SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1048 Column 'name' want to be null`. The code I'm using is as follows: ```php try { $pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=testdb', 'user', 'password'); $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION); $stmt = $pdo->prepare('INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES (:name, :email)'); $stmt->bindParam(':name', $name); $stmt->bindParam(':email', $email); // Trying to insert a user with an empty name $name = null; // This is where I'm seeing the scenario $email = 'test@example.com'; $stmt->execute(); } catch (PDOException $e) { echo 'Connection failed: ' . $e->getMessage(); } ``` I've confirmed that the database connection is successful and the table structure is correct. Initially, I thought assigning `null` to the `$name` variable would result in a MySQL NULL value, but instead, it seems to be violating the NOT NULL constraint. I also tried using an empty string `''`, but that doesn't solve the scenario either. In debugging, I noticed that if I completely omit the binding for `:name`, it executes without an behavior but obviously doesn't insert meaningful data. How can I resolve this and properly handle nullable fields while still using prepared statements? Is there something I'm missing with how PDO handles null values in prepared statements? Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm using Php LTS in this project. What's the best practice here? How would you solve this?