Mysqli and Object-Oriented PHP

Sometimes it is easy for me to get stuck doing things the way I know how to do it, rather than finding a better, more up-to-date method. I just had a recent post about making multiple connections to mysql, but just in the last week, I’ve learned a better way to do it. I’m a little behind in learning this stuff, but I’m sure there are others out there like me.

Mysqli stands for Mysql Improved. It came out a while ago, I believe with Mysql 4.1.3 and up. There are a lot of great benefits to using mysqli, which I won’t get into now. Maybe later. Here’s just a little to get you started using it:

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<?php
 
// Connect to Database
$db = new mysqli('host', 'username', 'password', 'database');
 
// Perform a query
$items = $db->query("SELECT * FROM cp_items WHERE id > 100");
 
// Run a loop through the results
while($item = $items->fetch_object()) {
    echo '<ul>';
    echo '<li>' . $item->id . '</li>';
    echo '<li>' . $item->name . '</li>';
    echo '</ul>';
}

Connecting to multiple databases at the same time is simple. Just create a new database object, and call the mysqli functions from it. You can read the full documentation of everything available with mysqli to learn more about it.