PHP Connect to MySQL with PDO

In this source code example, you’ll learn step by step how to connect to a MySQL database from PHP using PDO.

Prerequisites

Before connecting to a MySQL database server, you need to have:

• A MySQL database server, a database (create database test_db), and an account that has access to the database.
• PDO MySQL driver enabled in the php.ini file

PHP Connect to MySQL with PDO

The following index.php script illustrates how to connect to the test_db database on the MySQL database server with the root account:

<?php
/* Attempt MySQL server connection. Assuming you are running MySQL
server with default setting (user 'root' with no password) */

    $host= "localhost";
    $username= "root";
    $password = "";
    $db_name = "test_db";

    try{
        $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;dbname=$db_name", $username, $password);
        // Set the PDO error mode to exception
        $conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
        
        // Print host information
        echo "Connect Successfully. Host info: " . 
    $conn->getAttribute(constant("PDO::ATTR_CONNECTION_STATUS"));
    } catch(PDOException $e){
        die("ERROR: Could not connect. " . $e->getMessage());
    }
?>

PDO_MYSQL is a driver that implements the PDO interface. PDO uses the PDO_MYSQL driver to connect to a MySQL database.

PDO uses a data source name (DSN) that contains the following information:

• The database server host
• The database name
• The user
• The password
• and other parameters such as character sets, etc.

Create an instance of the PDO class to make a connection to a MySQL database:

        $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;dbname=$db_name", $username, $password);