README

A PDO-based Firebird/InterBase database driver for CodeIgniter 4, initially based on leirags/CI4-PDO-Firebird.

Requirements

• PHP 8.1 or higher
• ext-pdo with the pdo_firebird extension enabled
• CodeIgniter 4.7 or higher

Installation

composer require dgvirtual/codeigniter4-firebird

Then add a database group to app/Config/Database.php (see Configuration below).

Configuration

// app/Config/Database.php

public array $firebird = [
    'DSN'      => 'firebird:dbname=192.168.1.10:/path/to/database.fdb;charset=UTF8;dialect=3',
    'hostname' => '',
    'port'     => '',           // default Firebird port: 3050
    'username' => 'DBUSERHERE',
    'password' => 'DbPasswordHere',
    'database' => '',
    'DBDriver' => 'Dgvirtual\CI4Firebird',
    'DBPrefix' => '',
    'pConnect' => false,
    'DBDebug'  => true,
    'charset'  => 'UTF8',
    'DBCollat' => '',
    'swapPre'  => '',
    'encrypt'  => false,
    'compress' => false,
    'strictOn' => false,
    'failover' => [],
];

Or:

    // app/Config/Database.php
    public $firebird = [
        'DSN'      => '',
        'hostname' => 'example.com',
        'port'     => '3050',
        'username' => 'DBUSERHERE',
        'password' => 'DbPasswordHere',
        'database' => 'databasename',
        'DBDriver' => 'Dgvirtual\CI4Firebird',
        'DBPrefix' => '',
        'pConnect' => false,
        'DBDebug'  => (ENVIRONMENT !== 'production'),
        'charset'  => 'UTF8',
        'swapPre'  => '',
        'failover' => [],
];

Note: DBDriver must be set to the namespace Dgvirtual\CI4Firebird.

Usage

// Connect explicitly (e.g. in a controller)
$db = \Config\Database::connect('firebird');

// In a model
class MyModel extends \CodeIgniter\Model
{
    protected $DBGroup = 'firebird';
    protected $table   = 'MY_TABLE';
    protected $primaryKey = 'ID';
    protected $returnType = 'object';
}

Supported features

Connection

• Connects via PHP's PDO with the firebird: DSN prefix.
• Supports both explicit config (hostname + port + database path) and a pre-built DSN string.
• Error mode is set to PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION — all driver errors throw exceptions.
• reconnect() is implemented (closes and re-initialises the connection).

Querying

• Full SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE support through CodeIgniter's Query Builder.
• Raw simpleQuery() / query() execution works normally.
• Prepared statements are supported via PreparedQuery.
• affectedRows() returns the correct row count via PDOStatement::rowCount().
• A delete hack is applied automatically: bare DELETE FROM table statements are rewritten to DELETE FROM table WHERE 1=1 so that affectedRows() returns a meaningful value instead of 0.

Pagination

• Uses Firebird's native SELECT FIRST n SKIP m … syntax instead of the standard LIMIT/OFFSET clause, which Firebird does not support.

Result set

• getFieldCount(), getFieldNames(), and getFieldData() are implemented.
• Result rows are buffered internally (full fetch into a PHP array) to work around PDO's lack of a native cursor-seek.
• Return type can be configured to array or object as with any CI4 driver.

Schema introspection

• listTables() — queries RDB$RELATIONS, filtering out system tables (RDB$*, SEC$*, MON$*). Table prefix filtering is supported.
• listColumns() / _fieldData() — returns column names, Firebird native types, max length, and default values from RDB$RELATION_FIELDS / RDB$FIELDS.
• _indexData() — returns index metadata from RDB$INDICES.
• _foreignKeyData() — returns foreign key information.
• getVersion() — returns the server version string via PDO::ATTR_SERVER_INFO.

String / identifier handling

• String escaping uses Firebird-compatible single-quote doubling (' → '').
• LIKE wildcard escaping is implemented in escapeLikeStringDirect().

Running Tests

The test suite requires a live Firebird server. Everything else is self-contained — no CI4 application project is needed.

1. Install dependencies

git clone https://github.com/dgvirtual/codeigniter4-firebird.git
cd codeigniter4-firebird
composer install

2. Start a Firebird server

The quickest way is Docker:

docker run -d --name firebird-test \
  -e ISC_PASSWORD=masterkey \
  -e FIREBIRD_DATABASE=test.fdb \
  -p 3050:3050 \
  jacobalberty/firebird:3.0

Note: Use the Firebird 3.x image. The php8.3-interbase / pdo_firebird package ships a Firebird 3 client library (LI-V6.3.x). Connecting it to a Firebird 4 server causes subtle mis-behaviour (most notably, PDO::rollBack() silently commits instead).

The test suite creates and drops its own tables (TEST_CATS, TEST_ITEMS), so any empty database works.

3. Configure credentials (if necessary)

The default credentials in phpunit.xml.dist match the Docker command above (SYSDBA / masterkey, database /firebird/data/test.fdb on localhost:3050).

If your server uses different credentials or a different path, copy phpunit.xml.dist to phpunit.xml (which is git-ignored) and adjust the <env> entries:

<env name="FIREBIRD_DSN"      value="firebird:dbname=myhost:/data/custom.fdb;charset=UTF8;dialect=3"/>
<env name="FIREBIRD_USER"     value="MYUSER"/>
<env name="FIREBIRD_PASSWORD" value="secret"/>

Setting FIREBIRD_DSN takes precedence over the individual FIREBIRD_HOST, FIREBIRD_PORT, and FIREBIRD_DATABASE variables.

4. Run the tests

vendor/bin/phpunit

If the firebird_test connection cannot be established (server unavailable, wrong credentials, missing pdo_firebird extension), every test is automatically skipped rather than failing — so the suite is safe to run in CI environments that do not have Firebird available.

Known limitations (Needs checking/update)