PHP 7.0.6 Released

mysqli::__construct

mysqli_connect

(PHP 5, PHP 7)

mysqli::__construct -- mysqli_connectOpen a new connection to the MySQL server

Description

Object oriented style

mysqli::__construct ([ string $host = ini_get("mysqli.default_host") [, string $username = ini_get("mysqli.default_user") [, string $passwd = ini_get("mysqli.default_pw") [, string $dbname = "" [, int $port = ini_get("mysqli.default_port") [, string $socket = ini_get("mysqli.default_socket") ]]]]]] )

Procedural style

mysqli mysqli_connect ([ string $host = ini_get("mysqli.default_host") [, string $username = ini_get("mysqli.default_user") [, string $passwd = ini_get("mysqli.default_pw") [, string $dbname = "" [, int $port = ini_get("mysqli.default_port") [, string $socket = ini_get("mysqli.default_socket") ]]]]]] )

Opens a connection to the MySQL Server running on.

Parameters

host

Can be either a host name or an IP address. Passing the NULL value or the string "localhost" to this parameter, the local host is assumed. When possible, pipes will be used instead of the TCP/IP protocol.

Prepending host by p: opens a persistent connection. mysqli_change_user() is automatically called on connections opened from the connection pool.

username

The MySQL user name.

passwd

If not provided or NULL, the MySQL server will attempt to authenticate the user against those user records which have no password only. This allows one username to be used with different permissions (depending on if a password as provided or not).

dbname

If provided will specify the default database to be used when performing queries.

port

Specifies the port number to attempt to connect to the MySQL server.

socket

Specifies the socket or named pipe that should be used.

Note:

Specifying the socket parameter will not explicitly determine the type of connection to be used when connecting to the MySQL server. How the connection is made to the MySQL database is determined by the host parameter.

Return Values

Returns an object which represents the connection to a MySQL Server.

Changelog

Version Description
5.3.0 Added the ability of persistent connections.

Examples

Example #1 mysqli::__construct() example

Object oriented style

<?php
$mysqli 
= new mysqli('localhost''my_user''my_password''my_db');

/*
 * This is the "official" OO way to do it,
 * BUT $connect_error was broken until PHP 5.2.9 and 5.3.0.
 */
if ($mysqli->connect_error) {
    die(
'Connect Error (' $mysqli->connect_errno ') '
            
$mysqli->connect_error);
}

/*
 * Use this instead of $connect_error if you need to ensure
 * compatibility with PHP versions prior to 5.2.9 and 5.3.0.
 */
if (mysqli_connect_error()) {
    die(
'Connect Error (' mysqli_connect_errno() . ') '
            
mysqli_connect_error());
}

echo 
'Success... ' $mysqli->host_info "\n";

$mysqli->close();
?>

Object oriented style when extending mysqli class

<?php

class foo_mysqli extends mysqli {
    public function 
__construct($host$user$pass$db) {
        
parent::__construct($host$user$pass$db);

        if (
mysqli_connect_error()) {
            die(
'Connect Error (' mysqli_connect_errno() . ') '
                    
mysqli_connect_error());
        }
    }
}

$db = new foo_mysqli('localhost''my_user''my_password''my_db');

echo 
'Success... ' $db->host_info "\n";

$db->close();
?>

Procedural style

<?php
$link 
mysqli_connect('localhost''my_user''my_password''my_db');

if (!
$link) {
    die(
'Connect Error (' mysqli_connect_errno() . ') '
            
mysqli_connect_error());
}

echo 
'Success... ' mysqli_get_host_info($link) . "\n";

mysqli_close($link);
?>

The above examples will output:

Success... MySQL host info: localhost via TCP/IP

Notes

Note:

MySQLnd always assumes the server default charset. This charset is sent during connection hand-shake/authentication, which mysqlnd will use.

Libmysqlclient uses the default charset set in the my.cnf or by an explicit call to mysqli_options() prior to calling mysqli_real_connect(), but after mysqli_init().

Note:

OO syntax only: If a connection fails an object is still returned. To check if the connection failed then use either the mysqli_connect_error() function or the mysqli->connect_error property as in the preceding examples.

Note:

If it is necessary to set options, such as the connection timeout, mysqli_real_connect() must be used instead.

Note:

Calling the constructor with no parameters is the same as calling mysqli_init().

Note:

Error "Can't create TCP/IP socket (10106)" usually means that the variables_order configure directive doesn't contain character E. On Windows, if the environment is not copied the SYSTEMROOT environment variable won't be available and PHP will have problems loading Winsock.

See Also

User Contributed Notes

andres at 21brains dot com
1 year ago
Please do use set_charset("utf8") after establishing the connection if you want to avoid weird string issues. I do not know why the documentation does not warn you about this kind of stuff.

We had a hard time figuring out what was going on since we were using mb_detect_encoding and it said everything was UTF-8, but of course the display was wrong. If we used iconv from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 the strings looked fine, even though everything in the database had the right collation. So in the end, it was the connection that was the filter and although the notes for this function mention default charsets, it almost reads as a sidenote instead of a central issue when dealing with UTF and PHP/MySQL.
fugyl13 at gmail dot com
2 years ago
Note that on all >=Windows 7 Servers, a host name "localhost" will create a very expensive lookup (~1 Second).

That's because since Windows 7, the hosts file doesn't come with a preconfigured
127.0.0.1 localhost
anymore

So, if you notice a long connection creation, try "127.0.0.1" instead.
Ben
1 year ago
A far more secure and language independent way of connecting to mysql is to use the READ_DEFAULT_FILE options. This passes the workload over to the mysql library, which allows for the configuration file itself to be outside of the scope of the language.

The config file itself is something like this:
[client]
user=user_u
password=user_password
host=dbhost
port=3306
database=the_database
default-character-set=utf8

The following code fragment (in OO mysql_i format)

$sqlconf='/var/private/my.cnf';
$sql = new mysqli;
$sql->init();
$sql->options(MYSQLI_READ_DEFAULT_FILE,$sqlconf);
$sql->real_connect();
paul at mtnlist dot com
2 years ago
If you want to connect via an alternate port (other than 3306), as you might when using an ssh tunnel to another host, using "localhost" as the hostname will not work.

Using 127.0.0.1 will work.  Apparently, if you specify the host as "localhost", the constructor ignores the port specified as an argument to the constructor.
Anonymous
6 years ago
If you get an error like
  Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)
and you use named pipes/socket connections (or aren't sure how you installed the MySQL server) try the following connect command:

<?php
mysqli_connect
('.', $user_name, $password, $database_name, null, 'mysql');
?>

The '.' as hostname is absolutely necessary when using named pipes. 'localhost' won't work. 'mysql' is the standard name for the pipe/socket.
PaulieG
2 months ago
It should be noted that on PHP 7 (v7.0.2 at least), passing the empty string '' for the Port argument while connecting to 'localhost' will prevent the connection from being successful altogether.

To work around this, use 'null'.
till at etill dot net
5 months ago
Note that if the host name is an empty string, like so:

<?php
    mysqli
( '', 'user', 'password', 'database');
?>

then the object returned will have connect_errno=0 (as of PHP 5.5.9).
webmaster at aryes dot fr
9 months ago
A friend of mine encountered a sudden bug with CMS Piwigo. I discovered that :
- He had a hosting rule to use PHP 5.6.
- The hoster uses 5.6.6, verified using phpinfo();.
- The CMS declared a database name parameter as null.

That gallery CMS was unable to connect to MySQL and left only a warning message about it.

We tried to revert back to PHP 5.5, the CMS worked again.

Then we switched back to 5.6.6 and changed those lines :

  $dbname = null;
 
  $mysqli = new mysqli($host, $user, $password, $dbname, $port, $socket);

to

  $dbname = ''; // Use an empty string, not null
 
  $mysqli = new mysqli($host, $user, $password, $dbname, $port, $socket);

It worked!

So if you made the same mistake, using null where the manual invites to use an empty string, you should consider correcting your code.
oleg at mastak dot fi
3 years ago
If you want to connect to local named pipe on windows and you get error "php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: No such host is known. ", even if you using using "." as host, please check your if you are using mysqlnd driver: If this is true, then probably you need to update to version 5.4 of php:

Named pipes support for Windows was added in PHP version 5.4.0.
@ http://php.net/manual/en/mysqlnd.overview.php

Hopefully that will save you some time.
till at etill dot net
4 months ago
Note that if the user name is an empty string, like so:

<?php
    mysqli
( 'localhost', '', 'password', 'database');
?>

then the object returned will have connect_errno=0 (as of PHP 5.5.9). And, as noted elsewhere here, the same applies to the host name.
linguafranca2003 at yahoo dot com
1 year ago
mysqli can succeed in surprising ways, depending on the privileges granted to the user. For example,

GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'myuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'mypassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `database_a`.* TO 'myuser'@'localhost';
CREATE DATABASE database_b;

<?php
$db
= new mysqli('localhost', 'myuser', 'mypassword', 'database_b');

if (
$db->connect_error) {
        die(
'Connect Error (' . $db->connect_errno . ') '
           
. $mysqli->connect_error);
}

printf("SQLSTATE: %s\n", $this->db->sqlstate);
printf("Warning Count: %s\n", $db->warning_count);
$db->close();
?>

Will output:

SQLSTATE: 00000
Warning Count: 0

So, life is good — you're connected to the database and executing mysqli methods. Except, life isn't good, because you aren't actually using database_b because myuser doesn't have any privileges on it. You won't catch this until you try to perform a later operation, when you'll get an error, "MYSQL Error: No database selected", and find yourself scratching your head and thinking "what do you mean, of course I have a database selected; I selected one when I called the constructor".

As a result, you may want to perform an additional check after connecting to mysql, to confirm that you're actually connected not just to the mysql server, but to the actual database:

<?php
$db
= new mysqli('localhost', 'myuser', 'mypassword', 'database_b');

if (
$db->connect_error) {
        die(
'Connect Error (' . $db->connect_errno . ') '
           
. $mysqli->connect_error);
} elseif (
$result = $db->query("SELECT DATABASE()")) {
       
$row = $result->fetch_row();
        if (
$row[0] != 'database_b') {
               
//oops! We're connected to mysql, but not to database_b
       
}
}
?>
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