"localhost" issue vs. live site

[Leko]

Hello.

Hopefully some of you enlightened folks can help me with a concept that has been holding me back.

Every single PHP tutorial I've come across has been designed for a situation like XAMPP running on the machine with which you're coding. Therefore, the host name in the connection statement is "localhost". I haven't found anyone teaching how to code your connection if your site is hosted by a 3rd party.

At the top of PHPMyAdmin, the Server: is the top level domain that I'm using, whereas on the tutorials I've seen, Server: is localhost, which to me implies that it's only supposed to be "localhost" if you're coding on the serving box itself. My instinct tells me to construct my connection like this:

<?php

function connect(){
$con = mysql_connect("myDomain.com", "myUsername", "myPassword") or die(mysql_error());
$db = mysql_select_db("myDB", $con);
}

?>

Am I thinking about this wrongly?

Thanks in advance for your insight.
-Leko

[NogDog]

Normally you can use "localhost" regardless of where the script is hosted. There are exceptions where the database host is remote from the web host and needs to be accessed via its domain or IP address, but this tends to be the exception (and typically requires you to specify a port number as well).

("Localhost" just means "the same host where this script is running.")

[Leko]

Thanks a million for your insight! I've been struggling with this for 2 days.
-Leko