The free MySQL database is very often used with PHP.
Create a Connection to a MySQL Database
Before you can access data in a database, you must create a connection to the database.
In PHP, this is done with the mysql_connect() function.
Syntax
| mysql_connect(servername,username,password); |
| Parameter | Description |
| servername | Optional. Specifies the server to connect to. Default value is “localhost:3306” |
| username | Optional. Specifies the username to log in with. Default value is the name of the user that owns the server process |
| password | Optional. Specifies the password to log in with. Default is “” |
Note: There are more available parameters, but the ones listed above are the most important.
Example
In the following example we store the connection in a variable ($con) for later use in the script. The “die” part will be executed if the connection fails:
| <?php $con = mysql_connect(“localhost”,”peter”,”abc123″); if (!$con) { die(‘Could not connect: ‘ . mysql_error()); } // some code ?> |
Closing a Connection
The connection will be closed automatically when the script ends. To close the connection before, use the mysql_close() function:
| <?php $con = mysql_connect(“localhost”,”peter”,”abc123″); if (!$con) { die(‘Could not connect: ‘ . mysql_error()); } // some code mysql_close($con); ?> |