PDO MySQL returns php value type "string" for column type "YEAR"

[dortort]

Description

The following code:

<?php
/**
 * Given:
 * CREATE TABLE `t` (
 *   `y` year(4) DEFAULT NULL,
 *   `m` tinyint(3) DEFAULT NULL
 * ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
 * INSERT INTO t VALUES (2001, 11);
 */
$pdo = new PDO($dsn, null, null, [ PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES => false ]);
var_dump($pdo->query("SELECT * FROM t")->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC));

Resulted in this output:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  array(2) {
    ["y"]=>
    string(4) "2001"
    ["m"]=>
    int(11)
  }
}

But I expected this output instead:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  array(2) {
    ["y"]=>
    int(2001)
    ["m"]=>
    int(11)
  }
}

This breaking change occurs between PHP v8.0 & v8.1.

PHP Version

8.1.6

Operating System

Alpine 10.2

[cmb69]

That was a deliberate change when fixing bug 80808. The point is, that years are basically zero-filled to four characters width; fetching as integer would drop these leading zeroes, so that now a string is returned. It probably makes sense to document that behavior.