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I've spent a good amount of time trying to figure out why my decimals are being turned into a string I've used casting on my model. I've done some searching but however, I'm not finding a working answer. Some suggested casting to a float but isn't a float bad practice for dealing with actual prices? I should mention I'm using Laravel 5.8 and MariaDB
$table->decimal('total', 6, 2);
A decimal field in the database is basically a float, so a float should be good here!
If you want to store money in the database it's better to use plain integers. So for example if you have price of 5.67 you insert 567 in the database. From there you can convert it back to 5.67 if you wish ;)
Using strings and the BCMath library is the only precise way to handle decimal values in PHP (besides using integers).
@bobbybouwmann Decimal and float are not "basically the same", they are very different. You should never store precise data like amounts of money as a float. Rounding errors will mess up your calculations.
I have never had trouble using decimal. Double check what you are doing.
See https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_PFw--3o74TC16eXRBYXZBNFk/view
I use decimal no problem. No, No, No don't use float.
@JLRDW - All I'm doing is just pulling right from the DB?
{
"id": 2,
"invoice_id": 19,
"item_number": "96252635",
"description": "Ut voluptate veniam non deserunt aut.",
"unit_cost": "3.00", //string
"quantity": 0,
"price": "3.00", //string
"created_at": "2019-03-09 15:36:48",
"updated_at": "2019-03-09 15:36:48"
},
MySql knows what to do with the data when you post for example.
As an example say you have a form And Post to a controller method, strings are posted.
Just make sure in MySQL you have that field defined as decimal.
PHP has a lot of loose casting whereas if you were working with c# do you would have to properly cast everything.
Take note that date and time stamps are quoted also but when inserted into the database MySQL will take care of you.
That is done by the pdo db driver, to preserve the actual decimal number.You don't want a precise decimal in mysql being converted to a php floating point variable, introducing imprecision. Your calculations wouldn't be accurate. PHP doesn't have a decimal datatype, they get stored as floats.
https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=69974
https://medium.com/@rtheunissen/accurate-numbers-in-php-b6954f6cd577
Also see http://www.mysqltutorial.org/mysql-decimal/
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/precision-math-decimal-characteristics.html
If decimal could never be used, the MySql folks hopefully would not have that data type.
To me float is only good for scientific stuff. (Just me).
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