How to Connect to MySQL Database in PHP using PDO
In this tutorial, we are going to see how to connect to MySQL database in PHP using PDO. Before creating a connection to a MySQL database server, you must have:
- A MySQL database server installed on your local system or on a remote server.
- A database on MySQL server.
- MySQL account with a username and password to access the database.
In the example below, we will use:
- The local MySQL database server so that the DSN is localhost.
- A database called “test”.
- Root account with an empty password.
How to Connect to MySQL Database in PHP using PDO
<?php
$host = 'localhost';
$dbname = 'test';
$username = 'root';
$password = '';
try {
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
echo "Connected to $dbname on $host successfully.";
} catch (PDOException $e) {
die("Unable to connect to the database $dbname :" . $e->getMessage());
}
?>
If you have configured everything correctly, you will see the following message:
Connected to test on localhost successfully.
If the MySQL driver is not enabled in php.ini file, you will get the following error message:
Unable to load driver
To check if MySQL PDO driver is enabled, you need to open the php.ini file and uncomment the following line by removing the semicolon (;) at the beginning of the entry:
extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll




