Question: Plenty of others seem to have had this problem, but usually associated with an MySQL datatype.

I'm trying to convert a String to an Integer like this:

```
$adGroupId  = '5947939396';
$adGroupId  = intval($adGroupId)

```

However the Integer returned is 2147483647, irrespective of the string input.

Answer: 
It's happening because `2147483647` is the maximum integer value. You can use [floatval](http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.float.php)

```
$adGroupId  = '5947939396';
$adGroupId  = floatval($adGroupId);
echo $adGroupId;

```
Just typecast it to a float

```
$adGroupId = (float)$adGroupId;

```

Reference between the accepted answer and this one differences:
[Typecasting vs function to convert variable type in PHP](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30940148/typecasting-vs-function-to-convert-variable-type-in-php)