The has long been considered a fairly light and simple solution for developers to use to create robust and creative web applications. In fact, that’s as true now as it has ever been as the past few versions of PHP have made the language more appealing than ever. PHP programming language Like many other languages, PHP has the ability to take advantage of the power of , and it’s actually a pretty simple and straightforward process. MariaDB But talk, text, in this case, is cheap. So to demonstrate this I’ve created a called to manage contacts. simple PHP web application Rolodex In this article, I’m going to highlight, from a high level, some of the fundamental details of using PHP to connect to and communicate with a . Everything I’ll be exploring is based on the code for the application, and if you’d like to dive into the code you can check it out . MariaDB database Rolodex here Preparing the Database Before jumping into the PHP code for the application it’s important to note that it uses a single database called . rolodex CREATE DATABASE `rolodex`; The database contains a single table, , that is used to store basic information. rolodex contacts CREATE TABLE `rolodex`.`contacts` ( `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, `age` INT(3) NOT NULL, `email` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ); The SQL necessary to run the Rolodex application can be found in the . schema.sql file If you don't have an instance of MariaDB up and running yet you can find more information on how to get started in this . MariaDB Quickstart Guide Configuring the Application To facilitate the use of a MariaDB database within the Rolodex PHP application, I’ve created a new file called that contains the configuration settings and database connection object that can be reused across PHP pages. Connecting to and communicating with an underlying MariaDB database is facilitated by the . config.php mysqli PHP extension <?php // Basic connection settings $databaseHost = '<host_address>'; $databaseUsername = '<user_name>'; $databasePassword = '******'; $databaseName = 'rolodex'; // Connect to the database $mysqli = mysqli_connect($databaseHost, $databaseUsername, $databasePassword, $databaseName); Within the config.php file I’ve started by defining variables that hold the host address, username, password, and default database that are used to create a new , which contains a variety of configuration options that you can use to tailor to your environment. mysqli connection object Executing SQL Using, and reusing, the connection within is as easy as including it within a PHP code block on another PHP page. mysqli config.php <?php // Include the database connection file include_once("config.php"); ... ?> Then, with an established connection, you have the ability to use a plethora of capabilities from the mysqli extension, including executing queries using . mysqli_query Selecting data <?php // Include the database connection file include_once("config.php"); // Fetch contacts (in descending order) $result = mysqli_query($mysqli, "SELECT * FROM contacts ORDER BY id DESC"); ?> Selecting contacts using mysqli_query Or, in the case that you need to handle dynamically inserted parameter values, you can use . mysqli_prepare Inserting data $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO contacts (name,age,email) VALUES(?, ?, ?)"); Inserting contacts using mysqli_prepare Updating data $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("UPDATE contacts SET name=?, age=?, email=? WHERE id=?"); $stmt->bind_param("sisi", $name, $age, $email, $id); $stmt->execute(); Updating contacts using mysqli_prepare Deleting data $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("DELETE FROM contacts WHERE id=?"); $stmt->bind_param("i", $id); $stmt->execute(); Deleting contacts using mysqli_prepare As you can see, getting started with PHP and MariaDB is easy, but we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible. If you’d like to see for yourself what else is possible with PHP and MariaDB, start by checking out the full source code for the Rolodex application in the new . PHP Quickstart GitHub repository Learn More And if you’d like to learn even more about what’s possible with MariaDB be sure to check out the and the new . There you can find much more completely open-source content just like this spanning a variety of other technologies, use cases, and even programming languages. Developer Hub MariaDB Developer Code Central GitHub organization You can also dive even deeper into MariaDB capabilities in the . official MariaDB documentation And, as always, MariaDB is deeply rooted in open-source and would be nothing without their awesome community! If you’d like to help contribute directly to MariaDB you can find them on , send feedback directly to their Developer Relations team at , or join the conversation in the new ! GitHub developers@mariadb.com MariaDB Community Slack Happy coding! Also Published Here
