[derbs]

Alright guys
is there a way to connect to an access database using PHP? And how do you go about connecting to any database with PHP? Is there a nice simple connection string? I don't want to arse around with ODBC

I need your help mundy and zilla!!!

[philzilla]

to simply check you can connect, you can run something like this: [php]<?php
$DBName = "database";
$DBUser = "mysql";
$DBPass = "password";
$DBHost = "localhost";
$link = mysql_connect ( $DBHost, $DBUser, $DBPass )
or die ( "Could notconnect<br><br>" );
print ( "Connected to mysql server successfully<br><br>" );
mysql_select_db ( $DBName )
or die ( "Could not select database<br><br>" );
print ( "Connected to database successfully<br><br>" );
mysql_close ( $link );
?>[/php]you should check out the PHP site, it's well helpful.
there's a ton of info on the mysql site, like this, and some Access info too.

[Simon Mundy]

I'm pretty taken with the PEAR DB library to access databases now - it's all done with some very thorough classes, you can create 'generic' database calls so your code will be fairly portable if you change databases, the support is OK and it comes pre-installed with PHP 4.3.x (IIRC)

An example of how to initialise it:-

[php]

require_once('DB.php');
$dsn = 'mysql://user : password@localhost/your_database';
$sql = DB::connect($dsn);
if (DB::isError($sql)) { die($sql->getMessage()); }

[/php]

Then to retrieve an associative array of all your records from a query would be as simple as...

[php]
$data = $sql->getAssoc("SELECT * FROM yourtable",false,null,DB_FETCHMODE_ASSOC)
[/php]

... where each element of $data would be the key (usually your database record ID) and an associated array (fieldname -> data).

It's lovely and straightforward to use, you can even set up auto-inserts/updates and it has support for transactions (I use it on InnoDB tables in MySQL and it works a treat).

Have a quick browse of the docs in http://pear.php.net/

I don't know if it specifically supports access, but the list of DB's it DOES support is pretty good.