Calling info from a database via ID

[Blue Moose Aaron]

This is a tough one, but i was wondering if you ever ran into a problem using words rather than numbers as IDs in php/mysql before?

Before when I was simply caling files I had no trouble using words (ie smallville.php?action=bios&character=clarkkent), but now that I am calling info from the database it would only work if I called a number (ie smallville.php?action=bios&character=1)

I'm not sure what I can do about this. it isnt a huge deal, I just would like to try to keep my links the same as they were for the sake of bookmarks

If it isnt clear what Im talking about I can explain more.

Here is the code in using to call the info

PHP Code:

case 'bios': {
        $bio = intval($_GET['bio']);
        $row = $DB_site->query_first("SELECT * FROM smallville_cast WHERE id=$bio");
        $id = nl2br( $row[id] ); 
        $name = nl2br( $row[name] ); 
        $character_name = nl2br( $row[character_name] ); 
        $image = nl2br( $row[image] ); 
        $birth_date = nl2br( $row[birth_date] ); 
        $birth_place = nl2br( $row[birth_place] ); 
        $info = nl2br( $row[info] ); 
        $character_info = nl2br( $row[character_info] ); 
        eval("\$home[header] = \"".fetch_template('vbindex_header')."\";");
        eval("\$nav = \"".fetch_template('vbindex_customblock_1')."\";");
        eval("\$next_on_smallville = \"".fetch_template('vbindex_customblock_6')."\";");
        eval("\$smallville_episode_select = \"".fetch_template('smallville_episode_select')."\";");
        eval("\$smallville_biolink = \"".fetch_template('smallville_bio_links')."\";");
        eval( 'print_output( "' . fetch_template( 'smallville_bios' ) . '" );' );
        } 


Like I said before I originally set up the ID field to hold 'clarkkent' or 'lanalang' but it wouldnt work. However as soon as I changed the ids from clarkkent to 1 it worked.