PHP offers three different APIs to connect to MySQL. Below we show the APIs provided by the mysql, mysqli, and PDO extensions. Each code snippet creates a connection to a MySQL server running on "example.com" using the username "user" and the password "password". And a query is run to greet the user.
Example #1 Comparing the three MySQL APIs
<?php
// mysqli
$mysqli = new mysqli("example.com", "user", "password", "database");
$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT 'Hello, dear MySQL user!' AS _message FROM DUAL");
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();
echo htmlentities($row['_message']);
// PDO
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=example.com;dbname=database', 'user', 'password');
$statement = $pdo->query("SELECT 'Hello, dear MySQL user!' AS _message FROM DUAL");
$row = $statement->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
echo htmlentities($row['_message']);
// mysql
$c = mysql_connect("example.com", "user", "password");
mysql_select_db("database");
$result = mysql_query("SELECT 'Hello, dear MySQL user!' AS _message FROM DUAL");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
echo htmlentities($row['_message']);
?>
Recommended API
It is recommended to use either the mysqli or PDO_MySQL extensions. It is not recommended to use the old mysql extension for new development, as it has been deprecated as of PHP 5.5.0 and will be removed in the future. A detailed feature comparison matrix is provided below. The overall performance of all three extensions is considered to be about the same. Although the performance of the extension contributes only a fraction of the total run time of a PHP web request. Often, the impact is as low as 0.1%.
Feature comparison
| ext/mysqli | PDO_MySQL | ext/mysql | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PHP version introduced | 5.0 | 5.1 | 2.0 |
| Included with PHP 5.x | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Development status | Active | Active | Maintenance only |
| Lifecycle | Active | Active | Deprecated |
| Recommended for new projects | Yes | Yes | No |
| OOP Interface | Yes | Yes | No |
| Procedural Interface | Yes | No | Yes |
| API supports non-blocking, asynchronous queries with mysqlnd | Yes | No | No |
| Persistent Connections | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API supports Charsets | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API supports server-side Prepared Statements | Yes | Yes | No |
| API supports client-side Prepared Statements | No | Yes | No |
| API supports Stored Procedures | Yes | Yes | No |
| API supports Multiple Statements | Yes | Most | No |
| API supports Transactions | Yes | Yes | No |
| Transactions can be controlled with SQL | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Supports all MySQL 5.1+ functionality | Yes | Most | No |
sunny dot developer007 at hotmail dot com (2013-07-01 08:48:52)
So should we stop use of mysql in our new project as per future reference ? Is mysql extension is complete removed from the higher version then if it is so how its affect older websites which is created in mysql extension
roland at mxchange dot org (2013-04-02 11:33:18)
To solve PDO limitations as described by michaeln at associations plus dot see eh, you may try to overwrite PDO methods:
<?php
class MyPdo extends PDO {
// What ever parameters PDO wants + prepend some own:
public function query($caller, $line, $foo, $bar, $bazz) {
// Do your stuff here with $caller, $line (e.g. logging for debug purposes)
// Then call the extended method
return parent::QUERY($foo, $bar, $bazz) or $this->myErrorHandler($caller, $line, $someSqlToLog);
}
}
?>
This is only a very basic example. You may otherwise choose to "wrap" the PDO class and save an instance of the "underlaying" PDO class inside the wrapper class. This is maybe a little more complex approach but allows you to have on interfaces in class signature + way better flexibility.
michaeln at associations plus dot see eh (2013-03-12 14:49:31)
Another useful consideration to keep in mind when choosing your library is how extensible it is. Chances are, in any sufficiently advanced development scenario, you're going to be extending your database access class to add a method (or multiple methods) for how to handle database errors and alert the development team of errors and whether to have the code fail immediately or fail gracefully serving the user a user-friendly failure notice.
For example, I have a class where I have added extra parameters to the query() function (and a few others), which accept the __FILE__ and __LINE__ constants to facilitate tracking issues. If this were not reasonably possible with PDO-mysql for example (not sure, never used it), it may make one option or the other much less likely to be viable for your usage case.
alvaro at demogracia dot com (2012-06-21 09:29:54)
Apart from the feature list, I suggest you try out both MySQLi and PDO and find out what API design you like most. MySQLi is more powerful and probably more complex to learn. PDO is more elegant and has the advantage that you only need to learn one PHP API if you need to work with different DBMS in the future.