Options for Using MySQL with PHP

PHP currently offers multiple ways of working with MySQL. Some of the more popular methods include:

PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) DB package

This package offers a database-independent API for communicating with relational databases from PHP. PEAR::DB includes support for MySQL, but provides only rudimentary support for MySQL stored programs.

PHP MySQL extension (ext/mysql)

This PHP extension provides MySQL-specific support for working with MySQL. However, the mysql extension does not include methods for working with advanced MySQL features introduced in MySQL 4.1 and 5.0 and will probably never provide direct support for stored programs.

mysqli interface (ext/mysqli)

This PHP extension was introduced to support new features in MySQL 4.1 and 5.0.

PDO (PHP Data Objects)

PDO is a database-independent interface that will probably become the successor to the PEAR::DB interface. PDO became an officially supported interface only in PHP 5.1, so it is the newest of the PHP database interfaces.

Only the mysqli and PDO extensions provide full support for MySQL stored programs. In this chapter we will show how each can be used to interface with MySQL and how to use MySQL stored programs.