[RESOLVED] mysqli not supported

[clodius]

The hosting site I'm using says, "At the moment, we do not offer MySQLi support..." but they've added it to their list of customer requests for PHP5.

The books I'm using to learn PHP rely heavily on mysqli, with little or no explanation of what's happening, or how to recreate functions without mysqli support.

I'm banging my head against one particular function:

<?php

function db_connect()
{
   $result = new mysqli('localhost', 'bm_user', 'password', 'bookmarks'); 
   if (!$result)
     throw new Exception('Could not connect to database server');
   else
     return $result;
}

?>

How does mysqli connect differently than a plain ol' connection, and how can I recreate the function without mysqli? (Is it even possible?)

[MarkR]

You can't create an object $result which would behave the same as a mysqli connection object using plain mysql functions. This is because mysqli supports some things (e.g. native parameterised queries) which the plain mysql extension does not.

You could of course convert the examples to use mysql_ functions instead, which is probably (mostly) straightforward unless they're using parameterised queries.

Mark

[clodius]

Thank you, MarkR -- the assurance that I can just write and substitute a standard connection function helps tremendously.

Too bad for me that parameterized queries look like a useful feature -- but at least your explanation pointed me at the chunk of the book that explains what parameterized queries and prepared statements are.

Thanks again!