Fix to SQLite 3 – General error: 25 bind or column index out of range

Few days ago, I decided to build my own minimalistic Feed reader using SQLite3 for the backend and SimplePie – a very fast and easy-to-use feed parser, written in PHP.

Note: I am using PDO as my database abstraction layer.

I wrote the PHP class to connect to the SQLite database and a method that contains the SQL query that will insert records to the DB.
When I check to ensure the code wasn’t going awry, it indeed was as I got this error message:

General error: 25 bind or column index out of range

Possible Cause of this Error

• Error in SQL query

  This was the cause of the error in my case.
  Below is a code excerpt from the Feed reader class.

  
  public function addFeed($name, $url) {
  		try {
  			$conn = $this -> conn;
  			$conn -> setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
  			$sql = 'INSERT INTO feeds (name, url) VALUES (:name, :name)';
  			$update = $conn -> prepare($sql);
  			$update -> bindValue(':name', $name);
  			$update -> bindValue(':url', $url);
  		} catch (PDOException $e) {
  			echo $e -> getMessage(), $e -> getLine();
  		}
  	}
  

  Examining the SQL query in $sql variable, you could see I was binding the same parameter to both “name” and “url” column.
  The right code should have been:

  
  $sql = 'INSERT INTO feeds (name, url) VALUES (:name, :url)';
  

• Addition of quotes to placeholder

  When using prepared statements, the placeholders shouldn’t be quoted.

  For example, these are wrong:

  
  $sql = "UPDATE feed SET name = ':name', url = ':url'";
  

  
  $sql = 'INSERT INTO feeds (name, url) VALUES (":name", ":url")';
  

  These are right:

  
  $sql = "UPDATE feed SET name = :name, url = :url";
  

  
  $sql = 'INSERT INTO feeds (name, url) VALUES (:name, :url)';
  

  Conclusion

  Although this error was due to typographical error in the prepared statements, I felt I should write a blog post on it. Who knows, someone might find it useful someday.