When coding with PHP, the first requisite is a proper handling of variables, as they are not typed. We can think that the built-in is_int() function will work correctly to detect integer values inside a variable...
Try this:
$param = '1';
echo is_int($param);
It will return false, because it checks that the type of the variable is an integer... not that the variable's value can be interpreted as an integer ;)
In order to properly test for numeric values, you have to always use is_numeric() (documentation), and then one of the following options:
a) Do a cast (this works ok to detect floats, but will still fail with integers):
$param = '12.5';
echo is_float((float)$param);
b) Create a regular expression to check numeric formats.
Once again, the problem of untyped languages rises up. With a correctly typed language this wouldn't happen.
And with an untyped one, I wonder why leaving so many misleading functions instead of deprecating them in favor of correctly working ones...