How do you access the php database?

Do u want to access database using a php script?Do you have all the credentials to access the database?

PHP does not have a specific database but it has code that you can use to access many different databases.  This page has links to all the database drivers in PHP: http://www.php.net/manual/en/refs.database.php

Have installed a program or system that includes PHP along with a specific database?

Just ask it nicely and it might let you in!
Kidding. It depends on what sort of database you want to connect to and if you have the right credentials to access that database. You would need to know the username and password to access the DB then you would need to write/or get hold of a php script that will do the job for you. Here is a quick example of a database connection script in php. This does nothing but connect to the database. Once connected, you then use php to get information from, or insert/change information to the database. Anyway, here is an example.

<?php // simple database connection
define("HOST", "localhost"); // the hostname goes here but usually localhost
define("USER", "your_username_here"); // change this to your username
define("PASSWORD","your_password_here"); // Enter your password between the " " quotes
define("DB", "your_database_name_here"); // Enter the name of the database you want to connect to
mysql_connect(HOST, USER, PASSWORD); // This connects you to mysql
mysql_select_db(DB); // This connects you with the actual database you selected earlier
// end of file
?>


Now if you copied the above from the <?php to the ?> inclusive and saved it as "connect.php" then you can include it in any php script that you needed to get database access for. Another quick example. Here a script that will get an email address from a database with a "users" table.

<?php // test.php
include("connect.php"); // the connection script we made earlier
// Now we are connected to your database of choice.
$username = "Grant";
$sql = "SELECT `email` from `users` WHERE `username` = 'Grant' LIMIT 1";
$result = mysql_query($sql)or die(mysql_error());
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
$email = "{$row['email']}"; // This would get Grant's email address
}
echo "Grant's email address is " . $email;

?>

That's it! Pretty simple. This script doesn't actually do anything useful and you would not run a query like that in a real situation as it will return the first "Grant" it finds in the user table and supply his email address. Not very useful but it answers your question on how to connect to a database.

I hope that has been of some assistance to you.                    

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