Introduction

This tutorial will teach you, very simply how to connect to your database and show an error if it doesn't connect correctly.

Step 1

First of all we need to open our PHP tags.

Code:

<?php

?>

Step 2

Now we'll need to start by using a function called mysql_connect(). It hold 3 properties (1st - Database Hostname (eg; localhost in this tutorial), 2nd - Database Username (eg; foo in this tutorial), 3rd - Database Password (eg; bar in this tutorials)).

Code:

<?php
mysql_connect("localhost","foo","bar");
?>

Now just incase we have an error with those details we entered you can add a "or die" option at the end of it.

Code:

<?php
mysql_connect("localhost","foo","bar") or die("There was an error trying to connect to the database");
?>

This will then show an error message and stop the rest of the mysql stuff from loading if it cannot connect.

Step 3

Ok, so now we have connected to the database, we need to connect to the table in the database using the function mysql_select_db, which has one property (1st - table name (eg; dalehay in this tutorial)) - To find out what the table name is, just log into your phpMyAdmin and check the name at the top of the fields in the left menu (it usually has a number in brackets next to it).

Code:

<?php
mysql_connect("localhost","foo","bar") or die("There was an error trying to connect to the database");
mysql_select_db("dalehay");
?>

Now obviously if there IS a problem with that line, we also want it to stop and show an error message, so just like before add a "or die" tag at the end like so:

Code:

<?php
mysql_connect("localhost","foo","bar") or die("There was an error trying to connect to the database");
mysql_select_db("dalehay") or die("Hmmm the hamsters couldn't seem to connect to the database table");
?>

Nice and simple. :-)

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