MySQL and PHP - insert NULL rather than empty string

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

Answer 1

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 2

This works just fine for me:

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

(first '' increments id field)

Answer 3

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);