Doc #75448 [Opn]: In case of failure, mysqli::prepare() returns NULL instead of FALSE

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=75448&edit=1 ID: 75448 User updated by: morozov at tut dot by Reported by: morozov at tut dot by Summary: In case of failure, mysqli::prepare() returns NULL instead of FALSE Status: Open Type: Documentation Problem Package: MySQLi related Operating System: Linux PHP Version: 7.1.11 Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: It may be a common thing but it's still a bug. As far as I understand the design, all mysqli_* functions should return FALSE on failure, and a user can call mysqli_error() and friends to get the error details. What's the point of returning FALSE in some cases but NULL in others? Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2017-10-29 08:29:17] kalle@php.net I think this is a common thing in the mysqli extension to simply return null if the "active connection" check fails, so instead the docs should be updated to reflect thi ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2017-10-28 03:05:15] morozov at tut dot by Description: ------------ According to http://php.net/mysqli_prepare, mysqli_prepare() returns a statement object or FALSE if an error occurred. Under certain circumstances, it also returns NULL which makes error handling harder. Test script: --------------- <?php $conn = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'root', ''); $conn->close(); $stmt = $conn->prepare('SELECT * FROM users'); var_dump($stmt); Expected result: ---------------- The value of $stmt is FALSE. Actual result: -------------- The value of $stmt is NULL. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=75448&edit=1