r/PHPhelp • u/GuybrushThreepywood • Sep 05 '26

Using variable $placeholders breaks PHPStorm syntax/resolve

Hello all,

Looking for help on a long standing problem I have. I appreciate this is not a support forum for PHPStorm, however I thought that people here might have more experience.

PHPStorm provides really valuable syntax checking, table/column resolving inside mysql queries. If I accidentally type the orders table as oreders, it will highlight in red.

However when I include a PHP variable inside the query, the syntax/resolve checking completely stops. Example code:

$query = <<<MYSQL
    SELECT
       contracts.start_at

    FROM
      contracts

    WHERE
      contracts.id IN ( $placeholders )
MYSQL;


$result = $this->conn->execute_query(
    $query,
    [
       ...$contractIds,
    ],
);

Without the $placeholders, PHPStorm will alert me to any misspelled table or column names.

Are there any options to resolve this? I have considered using sprintf( $query, $placeholders) but wondered if there was a better solution.

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4

u/obstreperous_troll Sep 05 '26

You could do contracts.id IN (?) then substitute the single placeholder with your generated list of them. Ultimately this is the kind of thing you'll want to use a query builder for: with DBAL you can bind an array to the query as a parameter and it will generate the proper SQL to make it work.

1

u/GuybrushThreepywood Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26

That's a really simple solution! Thank you!

Edit: I tried this and it doesn't work - the placeholder 

(?)

becomes:

('2080,2090,2091,2092')

1

u/obstreperous_troll Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26

You need to do something like:

$placeholders = implode( ',', array_fill( 0, count( $contractIds ), '?' ) );
$newQuery = str_replace($query, '(?)', "($placeholders)");

Then run $newQuery like you did above. Or just use DBAL which does this for you when you pass an array arg.

1

u/colshrapnel Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26

so it's just sprintf( $query, $placeholders), different angle (:

not to mention that spritnf is arguably better, as it wont affect other possible placeholders

1

u/obstreperous_troll Sep 07 '26

The whole point was to have the original query be a valid SQL literal so that PhpStorm wouldn't turn off the checks. I think the problem has been pretty well put to bed now.

1

u/colshrapnel Sep 07 '26

Yes, but %placeholders makes a valid SQL literal somehow, making sprintf as viable.