PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (2024)

28

Note that on all >=Windows 7 Servers, a host name "localhost" will create a very expensive lookup (~1 Second).

That's because since Windows 7, the hosts file doesn't come with a preconfigured
127.0.0.1 localhost
anymore

So, if you notice a long connection creation, try "127.0.0.1" instead.

29

Please do use set_charset("utf8") after establishing the connection if you want to avoid weird string issues. I do not know why the documentation does not warn you about this kind of stuff.

We had a hard time figuring out what was going on since we were using mb_detect_encoding and it said everything was UTF-8, but of course the display was wrong. If we used iconv from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 the strings looked fine, even though everything in the database had the right collation. So in the end, it was the connection that was the filter and although the notes for this function mention default charsets, it almost reads as a sidenote instead of a central issue when dealing with UTF and PHP/MySQL.

6

Just wanted to add a note for anyone looking to use the MySQLi persistent connections feature; it's important to note that PHP opens and retains one connection per database user per process.

What this means is that if you are hosting multiple applications, each with its own database user (as is good practice) then you will end up multiplying the number of connections that PHP may hold open.

For example, if you have PHP configured with a maximum of eight worker processes, and you regularly use four different database users, then your MySQL server will need to accept at LEAST a maximum of 32 connections, or else it will run out.

However, if you would like to minimise the number of connections, what you can do is instead is to open the connection using a "guest" user (with no privileges except logging in) and then use ->change_user() to switch to a more privileged user, before switching back to the guest when you're done. Since all of the connections would therefore belong to the guest user, PHP should only maintain one per worker process.

8

There's a separate port parameter, unlike mysql_connect. However, using host:port on the host parameter does actually work.

There is a caveat. If the host is 'localhost' then the port is ignored, whether you use a port parameter or the implicit syntax I mentioned above. This is because 'localhost' will make it use unix sockets rather than TCP/IP.

6

If you want to connect via an alternate port (other than 3306), as you might when using an ssh tunnel to another host, using "localhost" as the hostname will not work.

Using 127.0.0.1 will work. Apparently, if you specify the host as "localhost", the constructor ignores the port specified as an argument to the constructor.

-1

public mysqli::__construct(
string $hostname = ini_get("mysqli.default_host"),
string $username = ini_get("mysqli.default_user"),
string $password = ini_get("mysqli.default_pw"),
string $database = "",
int $port = ini_get("mysqli.default_port"),
string $socket = ini_get("mysqli.default_socket")
)

the mysqli construct looks at the Master PHP.ini values.
if you're using a local ini overwrite of some sort add the ini_get to you're php script:
$mysqli = new mysqli(ini_get("mysqli.default_host"),ini_get("mysqli.default_user"),ini_get("mysqli.default_pw"))

It should be noted that on PHP 7 (v7.0.2 at least), passing the empty string '' for the Port argument while connecting to 'localhost' will prevent the connection from being successful altogether.

To work around this, use 'null'.

-2

If you get an error like
Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)
and you use named pipes/socket connections (or aren't sure how you installed the MySQL server) try the following connect command:

<?php
mysqli_connect('.', $user_name, $password, $database_name, null, 'mysql');
?>

The '.' as hostname is absolutely necessary when using named pipes. 'localhost' won't work. 'mysql' is the standard name for the pipe/socket.

-5

A far more secure and language independent way of connecting to mysql is to use the READ_DEFAULT_FILE options. This passes the workload over to the mysql library, which allows for the configuration file itself to be outside of the scope of the language.

The config file itself is something like this:
[client]
user=user_u
password=user_password
host=dbhost
port=3306
database=the_database
default-character-set=utf8

The following code fragment (in OO mysql_i format)

$sqlconf='/var/private/my.cnf';
$sql = new mysqli;
$sql->init();
$sql->options(MYSQLI_READ_DEFAULT_FILE,$sqlconf);
$sql->real_connect();

-6

mysqli can succeed in surprising ways, depending on the privileges granted to the user. For example,

GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'myuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'mypassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `database_a`.* TO 'myuser'@'localhost';
CREATE DATABASE database_b;

<?php
$db = new mysqli('localhost', 'myuser', 'mypassword', 'database_b');

if (

-7

A friend of mine encountered a sudden bug with CMS Piwigo. I discovered that :
- He had a hosting rule to use PHP 5.6.
- The hoster uses 5.6.6, verified using phpinfo();.
- The CMS declared a database name parameter as null.

That gallery CMS was unable to connect to MySQL and left only a warning message about it.

We tried to revert back to PHP 5.5, the CMS worked again.

Then we switched back to 5.6.6 and changed those lines :

$dbname = null;

$mysqli = new mysqli($host, $user, $password, $dbname, $port, $socket);

to

$dbname = ''; // Use an empty string, not null

$mysqli = new mysqli($host, $user, $password, $dbname, $port, $socket);

It worked!

So if you made the same mistake, using null where the manual invites to use an empty string, you should consider correcting your code.

-4

Be careful, mysqli_connect() does not return a resource ! It returns an instance of the mysqli class (http://php.net/manual/class.mysqli.php) The old mysql_connect() function did return a resource.

-15

If you want to connect to local named pipe on windows and you get error "php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: No such host is known. ", even if you using using "." as host, please check your if you are using mysqlnd driver: If this is true, then probably you need to update to version 5.4 of php:

Named pipes support for Windows was added in PHP version 5.4.0.
@ http://php.net/manual/en/mysqlnd.overview.php

Hopefully that will save you some time.