PHP PDO Tutorial: CRUD Example with MySQL

PDO stands for PHP Data Object and it's an extension that provides an interface for communicating with many supported popular database systems such as MySQL and Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQLite, etc.

It's provided starting with PHP 5.1.

Since PDO abstracts away all the differences between various database management systems, you only need to change the information about your database in your code in order to change the database system used in your PHP application.

Setting up PDO

PDO is added by default starting with PHP 5.1 but you need to set the necessary database driver in the php.ini file:

extension=pdo.so
extension=pdo_mysql.so

Creating a MySQL Database

Let's start by creating a MySQL using the mysql client. In your terminal, run the following command:

$ mysql -u root -p

Enter your MySQL database password when prompted.

Next, run the following SQL instruction to create a database:

mysql> create database mydb;

That's it! We now have a database to work with.

Creating a Database Table

Next, let's create a database table. First select your mydb database using:

mysql> use mydb;

Next, run the following SQL instruction to create a contacts table:

mysql > CREATE TABLE `contacts` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(30) NOT NULL,
  `email` varchar(50) NOT NULL
)

Connection to Database Using PDO

Let's start by creating a folder for our project:

$ mkdir php-pdo-example

Next, navigate to your project's folder and create the index.php and db.php files:

$ cd php-pdo-example
$ touch index.php
$ touch db.php

Open the db.php file and add the following class that allows you to connect to your MySQL database:

class DB
{

    protected $conn = null;


    public function Connect()
    {
        try {

            $dsn = "mysql:dbname=mydb; host=localhost";
            $user = <YOUR_DATABASE_USER>;
            $password = <YOUR_DATABASE_PASSWORD>;

            $options  = array(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE =>      PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION,
                PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE => PDO::FETCH_ASSOC,
            );


            $this->conn = new PDO($dsn, $user, $password, $options);
            return $this->conn;

        } catch (PDOException $e) {
            echo 'Connection error: ' . $e->getMessage();
        }
    }

    public function Close()
    {
        $this->conn = null;
    }
}

In our DB class we first a protcted $conn variable that will hold the PDO instance. Next, we define two Open() and Close() methods which will be used to open and close the connection to database.

Next, open the index.php file and include the db.php file:

include 'db.php';
 
try{
 
    $db = new DB();
    $conn = $db->Open();
    if($conn){
        echo 'connected';
    }
    else{
        echo $conn;
    }
}
catch(PDOException $ex){
    echo $ex->getMessage();
}

We include the db.php file and we create an instance of the DB class. Finally we call the Open() method of the the DB instance.

Running Database SQL Queries

After connecting to the databse, we can now run SQL queries.

Creating a Contact: SQL Insert

Let's start by adding the code to create a contact in the database by running a SQL insert query. Open the index.php file and update it accordingly:

include 'db.php';
 
try{
 
    $db = new DB();
    $conn = $db->Open();
    if($conn){
        $query = "INSERT INTO `contacts`(`name`, `email`) VALUES ('Contact 001','[email protected]')";
        $conn->query($query);
    }
    else{
        echo $conn;
    }
}
catch(PDOException $ex){
    echo $ex->getMessage();
}

Reading Data: SQL Select

Next, let's add the code for reading data from the database table.

Create a read.php file and add the following code:

include 'db.php';
 
try{
 
    $db = new DB();
    $conn = $db->Open();
    if($conn){
        $query = "SELECT * FROM contacts";
        $result  = $conn->query($query);
        foreach ($result as $row) {
            echo $row['name'] . "<br>";
            echo $row['email'] . "<br>";
        }
    }
    else{
        echo $conn;
    }
}
catch(PDOException $ex){
    echo $ex->getMessage();
}

You can also create update and delete opertions using the following SQL queries:

 $query = "UPDATE `contacts` SET `email`= '[email protected]' WHERE `id` = 1";

 $query = "DELETE from `contacts` WHERE `id` = 1";

Conclusion

In this quick tutorial we have seen how to create CRUD operations against a MySQL database using PDO and PHP.

• Author: Ahmed Bouchefra Follow @ahmedbouchefra

• Date: 07 Apr 2019