[RESOLVED] Can't access MySQL

Moonguide

I've been away from programming for a few years and am working through the examples in the book PHP and MySQL Web Development to get back up to speed. I've discovered a few things that are done differently from what the book says, and when I make those changes, things work. (Imagine that!) But, I have not found what works to access a MySQL database.

I'm trying to do these exercises on both my XP machine and by Linux machine.

I installed both MySQL and PHP with the msi installers on the XP machine, and I was able to run the MySQL monitor and create and populate a database. I can examine that database with the MySQL monitor, but I can't access it with PHP. Here's the code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Book-O-Rama Search Results</title>
</head>

<body>
	<h1>Book-O-Rama Search Results</h1>
	<?php
		$searchterm = htmlspecialchars($_POST['searchterm']); 
		$searchtype = htmlspecialchars($_POST['searchtype']);
		$host = "localhost";
		$user = "user";
		$password = "pass";
		trim($searchterm);

		if (!$searchtype || !$searchterm)

{

			echo "You have not entered search details.  Please go back and try again.";
			exit;

			}

		$searchtype = addslashes($searchtype);
		$searchterm = addslashes($searchterm);

echo "searchtype after addslashes = $searchtype <br>";
echo "searchterm after addslashes = $searchterm <br>";

		@ $db = mysql_pconnect($host, $user, $password);

echo "db = $db <br>";
echo "This is a line of text.";

(snip)

When this page is run, I get the text between the <h1> tags, and the echo-ings of $searchtype and $searchterm, but I don't get anything after that. If I comment out the mysql_pconnect line the next two echos work. I conclude from that that there is a problem with the way I'm trying to connect. The PHP manual didn't help -- it looks to me like I'm using mysql_pconnect correctly.

Did I miss something? Any recommendations on how to proceed?

On My Linux machine I haven't gotten that far. I used the mysql monitor to create the user bookorama, and the empty database books, but I am unable to start the mysql monitor with the user bookorama. When I look at that user with MySQL Adminstrator I see that the number of characters in the password doesn't match the number in the password I used. I try to change the password with MySQL Administrator and see it appear to work, but I still can't start the mysql monitor as user bookorama, and when I start up MySQL Administrator again, the character count has reverted to what it was before. This is more of a MySQL problem than a PHP one, but I'm hoping someone here will have some ideas for me. I posted the problem over at the MySQL forum, but haven't had any responses.

Thanks.

NogDog

Unless you have a specific technical reason to be using mysql_pconnect(), I would recommend using mysql_connect() instead. Anyway, to find out what the specific problem is, I would remove the "@" from the connection line so that error-reporting is not suppressed. You could also then add some code to check the return value and add some error reporting if it fails.

// make sure all errors are displayed for debugging purposes, delete from production version:
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

// connect to dbms:
$db = mysql_connect($host, $user, $password);
if(!$db)
{
   user_error("Unable to connect to DBMS: " . mysql_error());
}

Moonguide

That was very helpful. Thanks! I don't know what to do about what I found, but it's a big step.

Here's what prints:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect() in D:\LocalWebServer\htdocs\PHPandMySQLbook\source\chapter10\results.php on line 40

Am I missing a library or something like that?

shamly

yes ... you will have to compile php with mysql.

NogDog

Start by checking out the Windows installation notes on this page.

Another alternative is to install PHP and MySQL with one of the all-in-one packages such as WAMP or XAMPP. Just be aware that while these are good for getting a local test environment up and running, their default configurations are not necessarily good for a live server.

bradgrafelman

All you have to do is make sure that the PHP directory is in your system's PATH environment variable, and then enable the php_mysql.dll extension in your php.ini file.

Moonguide

Thanks for all the advice. I re-ran php-5.2.2-win32installer.msi and chose the Change button. I expanded the Extensions tree and found that both tabs had the drive icon instead of X already displayed. I clicked on each one anyway and selected "Entire feature will be installed on local hard drive" and then finished the install. Nothing changed, but I realized something probably had to be restarted. Before finding the instruction that said I needed to restart Apache, I restarted the machine -- same effect. Anyway, now I can connect to my MySQL database. $db returns "Resouce id #2" for:

$db = mysql_connect($host, $user, $password);

Thanks again.