8.2 MySQL Connect

Open a Connection to MySQL

Before we can access data in the MySQL database, we need to be able to connect to the server:

Example (MySQLi Object-Oriented)

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
  die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
echo "Connected successfully";
?>

Note on the object-oriented example above:

$connect_error was broken until PHP 5.2.9 and 5.3.0. If you need to ensure compatibility 
with PHP versions prior to 5.2.9 and 5.3.0, use the following code instead:

// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_error()) {
  die("Database connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}

Example (MySQLi Procedural)

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";

// Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password);

// Check connection
if (!$conn) {
  die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}
echo "Connected successfully";
?>

Example (PDO)

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";

try {
  $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=myDB", $username, $password);
  // set the PDO error mode to exception
  $conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
  echo "Connected successfully";
} catch(PDOException $e) {
  echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
}
?>

• Note: In the PDO example above we have also specified a database (myDB). PDO require a valid database to connect to. If no database is specified, an exception is thrown.
• Tip: A great benefit of PDO is that it has an exception class to handle any problems that may occur in our database queries. If an exception is thrown within the try{ } block, the script stops executing and flows directly to the first catch(){ } block.

Close the Connection

The connection will be closed automatically when the script ends. To close the connection before, use the following:

MySQLi Object-Oriented:

$conn->close();

MySQLi Procedural:

mysqli_close($conn);

PDO:

$conn = null;