PDO refuses to delete a row of data (in specific table)

Question

Okay, I am stumped with this one. I have a table in my database where I cannot seem to delete rows via PDO (I have noticed this behaviour for a few weeks now, it was working

Answer 1

The PDO::exec() function returns the number of affected rows, including 0 if no rows are affected.

A line like this will die() because exec will return 0 which is interpreted as boolean false.

$dblink->exec("UPDATE `sometable` SET `somecolumn`=0 WHERE `somecolumn`=0") or die("Never use die for error handling.");

The best error handling practice for PDO is to use PDO exceptions. Enable PDO exceptions (of PDOException class, see docs) like this:

//enable Exception mode (uncaught exceptions work just like die() with the benefit of giving you details in logs of where execution was stopped and for what reason)
$pdoDBHandle->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);

Remove or die() and exit(); and enable exception mode. I bet this will fix your "weird" problem. Also take a look at throwing Exceptions in PHP, even with procedural code (to replace die() and exit().

BTW exit stops execution just like die, except it is usefull in CLI mode because it returns a success/error code to the operating system. It really isn't meant for error handling.