[RESOLVED] Generating an SQL database for....

Denholm

Let me start off saying that I'm new, and I'm pretty much clueless about what needs to be done to make anything operate. I managed (with this forum's member's assistance of course) to install PHP 5.2.0 with the latest version of Apache.

Recently I've been searching on google for free scripts that would help me learn how to setup a login page. That way my website would have a special section for members. Each and every one of the free tutorials I looked through used a MySQL databse to store the user data such as login ID's and passwords. I wanted to know what I need to do to enable MySQL on Apache and PHP combined. Once again, I'm new, and I don't know if both PHP and Apache must be configured to run MySQL.

I do know that MySQL runs using PHP scripts and is (to the extent of my knowledge) saved using the .php extension. Yet I do not know how to configure PHP and Apache to run the MySQL database. If you could please help me in this matter I would greatly appreciate the effort.

sneakyimp

a quick google search turned up this:

http://www.hostlibrary.com/installing_apache_mysql_php_on_linux

the mysql site has this:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/installing.html

NogDog

Denholm wrote:
I do know that MySQL runs using PHP scripts and is (to the extent of my knowledge) saved using the .php extension. Yet I do not know how to configure PHP and Apache to run the MySQL database. If you could please help me in this matter I would greatly appreciate the effort.

No, PHP and MySQL are separate applications. However, PHP has many built-in functions specifically for interfacing with MySQL making the two applications "play well with each other", but pretty much any modern programming language could be configured to interface with MySQL, too.

Anyway, if the installation of the separate pieces gets to be too much of a headache, you might want to look at one of the several all-in-one installation packages such as XAMPP (Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl) or WAMP (Apache, PHP, and MySQL) which can make the whole installation thing much less painless (though installing them each manually is a good learning experience and gives you a better idea of what is going on "under the hood"). Both include the phpMyAdmin application, which provides a web-based GUI for working with MySQL databases.

rincewind456

To get MySQL to talk to PHP you will have to install MySQL (obviously 🙂 ).
Then open your php.ini for editing and uncomment(by removing the ;) the line for the mysql dll , it look like

;extension=php_mysql.dll

Then change your path to extensions dir it will look like

extension_dir = "./"

change it to this

extension_dir = "c:\php/ext/"

This assumes that you installed php in C:\php and that you haven't moved your extensions around.

Save and restart the Apache server, for the changes to take place if it restarts ok you should now be able to communicate between php and mysql.

Then just google for a simple tutorial to show you how to connect to mysql from php.

Here is a quick test script to see if you can connect

<?php
$dbpass= "root";	
$dbuser = "rincewind";	// Change to the password you created when installing Mysql

$result =  mysql_connect('localhost', $dbpass, $dbuser);
if (!$result){
	print('Could not connect to database server');
}else{
	print "You've connected to your Mysql Server";
}
?>

Denholm

Let me start out by saying, "Thank you" to all that replied. Yet I do have a few problems. First one is that I don't know if I was supposed to use the MySQL installer or the Win32 .zip archive to install MySQL. Taking that the Win32 .zip archive worked so well on PHP, I went ahead and used that to install / unzip MySQL to "C:\mysql".

I had no problems editing the "php.ini" file, the problem came in when I restarted apache. An error message displayed mentioning that the server could not find the file "LIBMYSQL.dll" in a number of different directories including "C:\apache\bin\". I re-checked the "php.ini" file to make sure I didn't miss something in the "extension_dir = "c:\php\ext\" script. It was all clear (Note that I used the original "c:\php/ext/" script first, yet tried the one mentioned above to see if it would make a difference.).

I attempted to restart, the same error message. So I looked in the "C:\mysql\bin\" directory if it possibly had the "LIBMYSQL.dll" file. It did, so I copied this to the "C:\apache\bin\" directory to see if it would make a difference. It sure did, server restarted succesfully. Yet the next problem was checking to see if I could communicate with MySQL.

I used the same script you gave me, assuming since I did not assign a password (Since I used the win32 .zip archive to install), I used the default "root" and made up my own user name. When I loaded the page I got that not so famous message "Could not connect to the database server".

Any ideas as to why I was getting the error message about "LIBMYSQL.dll". Plus how can I assign a user name and password manually?

rincewind456

I have found that you're better of using the installer version of mysql. Try that as I have never had any problems installing it that way.

Denholm

Will try that, starting the download right now.

Denholm

Well, I installed MySQL using the installer from their website. It installed succesfully, yet I never got to choose the directory where I wanted to install MySQL. Afterwards I used the configuration wizard to setup the MySQL server, it ran smoothly except for the last part where I had to open port 3306, which was already open. So I pressed "Retry" and it finished.

This is the part where I'm not sure what to do next, cause I went back and edited the script you gave me so it uses the correct password, I used the user name of "root" since it never asked me for a user name. Once I loaded the page through apache it still mentioned that the SQL databse server could not be accessed.

I haven't attempted a restart yet, and I havent configured any files such as "php.ini" or "httpd.conf". The only thing I edited after installing MySQL was the test file to check if the MySQL databse could be connected to.

rincewind456

When you installed the Mysql server did you install the command line client? if so you can start that and see if you can connect to the sql server that way.

You can also check to see that the sql server is running in the task manager processes, tab look for mysqld-nt.exe

Check to see if your php_mysql.dll is in the c:\php\ext folder.

Edit the php.ini as I have said before.

There is nothing in the httpd.conf file that needs editing.

Save your php.ini and restart the apache server.

Denholm

The process "mysqld-nt.exe" is running in the task manager. The file "php_mysql.dll" was also located in the c:\php\ext\ folder. Since the file was located in the "ext" folder I didn't bother messing with the "php.ini" file.

I do not know if I installed the command line client. For that matter, I'm not even sure what it is. I also once again after my recent reboot attempted to see if connectivity would be made with the database server. It still didn't work.

This all must be due to the "command line client" that I'm not sure if I installed or not.

rincewind456

Installation of the command line client is not required for anything to work! It just enables you to run commands direct to the sql server, as you say that the mysqld-nt.exe is running then you can safely assume that the sql server is working.

You must edit the php.ini, if you don't then no extensions will be enabled, and if you don't edit the extension_dir directive the default ./ won't point to the extension directory in a windows environment.

Denholm

I understand that the PHP.ini file must be edited. Yet I do not know what needs editing since I already enabled the sql extension from last time and also made sure the extension_dir points to "c:\php\ext\".

rincewind456

extension_dir = "c:\php/ext/"

Not

Denholm wrote:
"c:\php\ext\".

Roger_Ramjet

Once you've got it running, download and use the MySQL GUI Tools to administer your server and build your db - far better than phpmyadmin. Just dl and instal the version for your local desktop and you can use it to login to and administer any remote server (with the correct login obviously)

Denholm

rincewind456 wrote:
extension_dir = "c:\php/ext/"
...

I edited the php.ini file so it reads the way you posted, yet after restarting the apache server and visiting the page that would eventually connect to the MySQL databse it would still not connect.

Denholm

Well, I just couldn't let it go and finally got it working.

To resolve the issue I uninstalled MySQL from its old location (C:\Program Files\MySQL) and re-installed it using the, "custom" feature to location C:\MySQL\

Afterward I added C:\php
to the system's PATH variable value. After a restart of the computer, Apache returned no errors regarding libmysql.dll and the script ran just fine.

Successful connection! Thanks guys!🙂