SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064

If you are using PDO adapter to work with databases in Zend Framework you might come across an exception similar to this:

Message: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ')' at line 2

It took me some time to track down the cause of this error message. I was building a complex query with Zend_Db_Select which included several joins and subqueries so I thought I had made a mistake in syntax somewhere but the problem was I was passing an undefined variable to where() method. So the problematic line was:

$select->where($where);

And $where was not defined. Hope this helps somebody.

Addendum (Oct 6, 2009 @ 14:13)

The same problem can occur also when there is any error in your WHERE clause, for instance:

WHERE id =

The above (there’s a missing integer after “id =”) would throw the same exception.