PHP is a server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language that may be used to create dynamic Web pages. It is available for most operating systems and Web servers, and can access most common databases, including MySQL. PHP may be run as a separate program or compiled as a module for use with the Apache Web server.
PHP actually provides two different MySQL API extensions:
mysql: Available for PHP versions 4 and 5, this extension is intended for use with MySQL versions prior to MySQL 4.1. This extension does not support the improved authentication protocol used in MySQL 4.1, nor does it support prepared statements or multiple statements. If you wish to use this extension with MySQL 4.1, you will likely want to configure the MySQL server to use the --old-passwords option (see Section C.5.2.4, “Client does not support authentication protocol”). This extension is documented on the PHP Web site at http://php.net/mysql.Section 22.10.2, “MySQL Improved Extension (
Mysqli)” - Stands for “MySQL, Improved”; this extension is available only in PHP 5. It is intended for use with MySQL 4.1.1 and later. This extension fully supports the authentication protocol used in MySQL 5.0, as well as the Prepared Statements and Multiple Statements APIs. In addition, this extension provides an advanced, object-oriented programming interface. You can read the documentation for themysqliextension at http://php.net/mysqli. Helpful article can be found at http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/686 and http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/687.
If you're experiencing problems with enabling both the
mysql and the mysqli extension
when building PHP on Linux yourself, see
Section 22.10.7, “Enabling Both mysql and mysqli in
PHP”.
The PHP distribution and documentation are available from the PHP Web site.
Portions of this section are Copyright (c) 1997-2008 the PHP Documentation Group This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License or later. A copy of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license is distributed with this manual. The latest version is presently available at This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditio\ ns set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0.8 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).