pset7: query(INSERT) return value?

Question

According to PHP documentation, the following is true about the query(INSERT) statement:

For other type of SQL statements, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, etc, mysql_query() returns TRUE on success or FALSE on error.

However, when I run the following version of the statement:

$insert = CS50::query("INSERT INTO portfolios (users_id, symbol, shares) VALUES(?, ?, ?) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE shares = shares + VALUES(shares)", $_SESSION["id"], strtoupper($stock["symbol"]), $_POST["shares"]);

and then var_dump($insert), I get an int (1 or 2), instead of TRUE or FALSE. This makes error-checking impossible.

Does anyone have any idea as to why that is happenning? Everything works fine, it's just the return value that is weird.

Answer 1

You are not calling PHP mysql_query(). You are calling CS50::query. From the pset specification/instructions:

If query is instead passed a DELETE, INSERT, or UPDATE statement, it will return a non-negative integer that represents the number of rows deleted, inserted, or updated, respectively.......... Note our use of IGNORE, which ensures that this statement will return 0 if username already exists