PostgreSQL connection problems

Anon

I am trying to connect to a PostgreSQL database using PHP, I have tried the following test script.........

<?php
$dbconn = pg_Connect("host=localhost" "dbname=post_test" "user=postgres" "passwd=password123");
print ("Connected successfully");
pg_close ($dbconn);
?>

but get the following error.........

Parse error: parse error in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/test.php on line 2

I have had a fair amount of success using MySQL so I assume I have Apache and PHP are installed OK.

I can connect, no problem from the command line and the Postmaster was started using $postmaster -i.

Could it be something to do with the $PATH (only user postgres has the data and libraries in its path)? or am I doing something fundamentaly wrong?

Any other pitfals I need be aware of when porting from MySQL to postgres?

Muchos gracias

Stew:80

Anon

You're mixing the two possible syntaxes for a pg_connect. They can either be:

pg_connect ("hostname","port","options","tty","dbname");

pg_connect ("dbname=database host=hostname port=number tty=tty options=opts user=username password=pwd");

Other common pitfalls:

You can only get the lastoid from postgres via PHP, not the last unique key inserted.

Max backends by default is compiled in at 32 (WAY too low) and needs to be recompiled on heavily worked sites to be at least 64 or 128.

To create a column that is an autoincrementing primary key, use the SERIAL keyword for it's type, like so:

create table test (name text, id_num SERIAL);

This will create a sequence and index to go with your table. Currently a drop table will drop the index but you have to drop the sequence by hand.

Anon

Thanks Scott, but I am still getting the same error.

I have refered to php.net and copied their example, substituting my values therin.

<?php
$dbconn = pg_connect ("user=postgres passwd=password123 dbname=post_test");
print ("Connected successfully");
pg_close ($dbconn);
?>

Is it important to include TTY, port and options, if so where can I find out more.

Stew

Anon

The only options you HAVE to supply are database.

Assuming your postgres server is on the same machine as php,

Try this syntax once:

$db="db_name";
$conn=pg_connect("","","","",$db);
print $conn;

and see if you get a connect.

Note that if you explicitly name your server (whether it's local or not) then the pg_hba.conf file must have a line telling postgres that your php machine has permission to access postgres and what authentication to use.