Brief forward: I tried to ask this on the FUEL forums, but every time I try and register, their forum says "Failed sending activation email" and I can t log in or reset my account. So hopefully folks here will check it out. I saw some of the developers of FUEL on this site before.

Here is an example mysql table:

CREATE TABLE `test` (
  `user_id` INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
  `username` VARCHAR( 128 ) NULL ,
  `last_login` DATETIME NULL
) ENGINE = InnoDB 

Evidently, unlike a lot of folks, I personally like to take advantage of the NULL value of databases. In layman s terms, NULL means it s never been initialized with a value. In this case if our user has never logged in, I want that reflected in his record by having the last_login value equal NULL. So, NULL = "never logged in."

If I was to add a new user to my database via the command line or through something like phpMyAdmin, I d type in the following query.

INSERT INTO `test` (
    `user_id` ,
    `username` ,
    `last_login`
)
VALUES (
    NULL ,  test_person_1 , NULL
);

This is the result of that query.

+---------+---------------+--------------+
| user_id |    username   |  last_login  |
+---------+---------------+--------------+
|    1    | test_person_1 |     NULL     |
+---------+---------------+--------------+

Now, let s use FUEL s ActiveRecord

Here is my model (simple enough):

<?php

class Model_Test extends ActiveRecordModel { 

    public $primary_key =  user_id ;
    public $table_name =  test ;  // Why does fuel want to pluralize table names?  Grr.

}

And here is a super-basic example of a controller method that inserts a record into the table. I know I would never want an action that repeatedly inserts the same data over and over again. This is just a test. Cool?

public function action_save_example1()
{
    $o_user = new Model_Test(array(
         username  =>  test_person_2 ,
    ));
}

And this is what I get after running that method:

mysql> select * from test;
+---------+---------------+---------------------+
| user_id | username      | last_login          |
+---------+---------------+---------------------+
|       1 | test_person_1 | NULL                |
|       2 | test_person_2 | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 |
+---------+---------------+---------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Notice that test_person_2 s DATETIME field is "0000-00-00 00:00:00" That s not NULL. Even if I specifically state that last_login is null, FUEL s ActiveRecord class makes in not null. Example.

public function action_save_example1()
{
    $o_user = new Model_Test(array(
         username  =>  test_person_2 ,
         last_login  => NULL
    ));
}

I have a feeling that this is the query that ActiveRecord is running.

INSERT INTO `portal_links`.`test` (
    `user_id` ,
    `username` ,
    `last_login`
)
VALUES (
    NULL ,  test_person_2 ,   
);

There needs to be some sort of logic to test if a value === NULL before inserting or updating and if it is NULL, it should use the keyword NULL and not . CodeIgniter s ActiveRecord class seems to understand the difference between NULL and .

<?php
// CodeIgniter Example
$o_query = $this->db->insert( test , array(
    user_id  => NULL,
    username  =>  code_igniter_user ,
    last_login  => NULL
));