Database Connectivity

Hagaroo

Is there any way to tell if your PHP script is talking to the database? Any script I try from the several reference books I have returns nothing. In other words, anything outside the PHP script in the html portion of the code is displayed while the script returns nothing. Here is the first page called from the main menu:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Joke CMS: Manage Jokes</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type"
    content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>Manage Jokes</h1>
<p><a href="newjoke.php">Create New Joke</a></p>
<?php

$dbcnx = @mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', 'booboo');
if (!$dbcnx) {
  exit('<p>Unable to connect to the ' .
      'database server at this time.</p>');
}

if (!@mysql_select_db('jokes')) {
  exit('<p>Unable to locate the joke ' .
      'database at this time.</p>');
}

$authors = @mysql_query('SELECT id, name FROM author');
if (!$authors) {
  exit('<p>Unable to obtain author list from the database.</p>');
}

$cats = @mysql_query('SELECT id, name FROM category');
if (!$cats) {
  exit('<p>Unable to obtain category list from the database.</p>');
}
?>

<form action="jokelist.php" method="post">
<p>View jokes satisfying the following criteria:</p>
<label>By author:
<select name="aid" size="1">
  <option selected value="">Any Author</option>
<?php
while ($author = mysql_fetch_array($authors)) {
  $aid = $author['id'];
  $aname = htmlspecialchars($author['name']);
  echo "<option value='$aid'>$aname</option>\n"; 
}
?>
</select></label><br />
<label>By category:
<select name="cid" size="1">
  <option selected value="">Any Category</option>
<?php
while ($cat = mysql_fetch_array($cats)) {
  $cid = $cat['id'];
  $cname = htmlspecialchars($cat['name']);
  echo "<option value='$cid'>$cname</option>\n"; 
}
?>
</select></label><br />
<label>Containing text: <input type="text" name="searchtext" /></label><br />
<input type="submit" value="Search" />
</form>

<p><a href="index.html">Return to front page</a></p>
</body>
</html>

This creates the h1 heading "Manage Jokes" and a hyperlink to "Create New Joke" and nothing else. Before anyone asks, there is a working database on the computer set up as the book specifies. I've tried it all at work too with no problems. This really baffles me. I'm running Windows XP Pro (SP 2), PHP v5.0.3, and MySQL 5.0.2 alpha. Is it possible that I have to open some ports on the internal firewall of Windows XP Pro? Any assistance greatly appreciated. Suggestions very welcome! Thanks!

Frederick

Yes, you add

or die (mysql_error())

to your functions. If you do not get an error message, then all is well.

$db = mysql_connect("server","username","password") or die (mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("database",$db) or die (mysql_error());

Hagaroo

I added the suggested code, but it's still doing the same thing. It really seems like it's not going into the PHP code. Once again it prints the h1 text and the hyperlink, but nothing from inside the PHP tags. Is there any reason why it wouldn't enter the tags? Simple PHP scripts run fine. Once again any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!

tsinka

Hi,

add

<?PHP
  error_reporting(E_ALL);
?>

on top of the script and check for any PHP error or warning messages.

Does PHP work at all ? Does

<?PHP
  phpinfo();
?>

print anything ?

Thomas

Hagaroo

Thanks Thomas, this is truly baffling. Where specifically should I add the error reporting code you suggested? I put it in its own block right after the newjoke.php link and before the main PHP script. If that was right, I'm still getting the same results when I run the script. I've tried other PHP scripts, with no MySQL connectivity, and they all worked fine. I ran the PHPinfo script you suggested and it worked like a charm. I did notice one thing though, there was no reference to MySQL in the configuration whatsoever. Could this be the problem? Once again I appreciate any and all responses. Thanks!

tsinka

Did you activate the mysql or mysqli extension in php.ini ?

Thomas

Hagaroo

If you mean did I uncomment out the "extension=php_mysql.dll" line, yes. Interestingly though, when I use phpinfo() to view the settings it says nothing about MySQL while at work, where the database scripts work, there is a full MySQL section. Any ideas?

tsinka

Did you copy libmysql.dll to system32 ?

Since MySQL 4.1.x MySQL has a different client API. You might need to use the mysqli functions instead. There are some ways to use the mysql functions with MySQL versions >=4.1.x:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html

Thomas