PHP Tutorials

PHP and MySQL: what you need for these tutorials

PHP has the ability to connect to and manipulate databases. The most popular database system that is used with PHP is called MySQL. This is a free database system, and comes with the EasyPHP software you may have installed at the start of the course. We will be working with MySQL databases throughout these lessons.

If you installed EasyPHP, then you should see a folder like this on your hard drive:

If you haven't yet got MySQL, you can download it here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

Click on the Community Edition link, and you'll be taken to a download page. Select your operating system from the list. (Windows user might want to try the Windows (x86) option. This is a setup.exe file that you just double click to install.)

For instructions on how to install MySQL on your operating system, see the online documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/index.html.

We'll assume that you already have MySQL installed. But to check that it's up and running using EasyPHP, if you have it (Windows users only), start EasyPHP and you should see a dialogue box like this:

If you have a green light to the right of the MySQL button, then you database system is up and running OK.

Now enter this in your browser's address bar:

http://127.0.0.1/mysql/

If it doesn't work, try this:

http://127.0.0.1/home/mysql/

You should see the phpMyAdmin page display:

The phpMyAdmin page (opens in a new window - 87K)

We're going to be creating databases using this. But if you can see the page OK, then you have everything you need. You might want to bookmark the mysql page, though!

If you can't see the page, then either MySQL isn't installed, or it's not configured correctly. Again, you need to refer to the documentation to fix this.

However, we have a few databases amongst the files you downloaded. So you can still follow along with the later tutorials.

In the next part, you'll see how to create a database with phpMyAdmin.

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