Doctrine DBAL parameters not working - php

Question

Hi I'm using PHP Silex with Doctrine DBAL query builder (no ORM) and SQLite. It sort of works, so I can build a query and it spits back results, but I for the life of me I can't get setting parameters to work (I get empty array all the time).
Here's what works:
$qb->select('*')
->from('photos')
->where("country = '".$country."'")
->andWhere('status = 1')
->orderBy($sort[0], $sort[1])
->setFirstResult($start)
->setMaxResults($limit)
For obvious reasons I would like to replace that with:
$qb->select('*')
->from('photos')
->where("country = ?") /// <--
->andWhere('status = 1')
->orderBy($sort[0], $sort[1])
->setFirstResult($start)
->setMaxResults($limit)
->setParameter(0, $country) /// <--
Or:
$qb->select('*')
->from('photos')
->where("country = :country") /// <--
->andWhere('status = 1')
->orderBy($sort[0], $sort[1])
->setFirstResult($start)
->setMaxResults($limit)
->setParameter(':country', $country) /// <--
Or even:
$qb = $this->db->createQueryBuilder();
$expr = $qb->expr();
$qb->select('*')
->from('photos')
->where($qb->expr()->andX(
$qb->expr()->eq('country', '?1'), /// <--
$qb->expr()->eq('status', 1)
))
->orderBy($sort[0], $sort[1])
->setFirstResult($start)
->setMaxResults($limit)
->setParameter(1, $country) /// <--
These are all examples of setting params I found in the docs, however none of them seems to work and I'm not sure how to debug that. Checking $qb->getSQL() and $qb->getParams() doesn't seem to show anything useful.
Im using ("doctrine/dbal": "~2.2") if that matters.

Answer 1

I came back to my own question by accident cause I solved it long time ago and of course it turned out to be a silly thing. The problem lied not in building the query properly but using it the right way. Here's the answer for future reference.
With Query Builder you don't do:
$this->db->fetchAll($qb->getSQL());
// you get query with unfilled placeholders
but rather:
$qb->execute()->fetchAll();
Thanks to all who tried to help!