To establish a database connection in PHP, you can use the mysqli extension or the older mysql extension, depending on your PHP version. However, it's generally recommended to use mysqli as it provides improved functionality and supports more features. Here's an example of how to establish a database connection using mysqli:
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$servername = "localhost"; // Replace with your server name
$username = "your_username"; // Replace with your database username
$password = "your_password"; // Replace with your database password
$dbname = "your_database"; // Replace with your database name
// Create a connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
// Connection successful, perform database operations here...
$conn->close(); // Close the connection when done
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In this example, you need to replace the placeholders (localhost, your_username, your_password, and your_database) with the appropriate values for your database server.
Once the connection is established, you can perform various database operations such as executing queries, inserting data, updating records, or fetching results using the $conn object. Remember to close the connection using $conn->close() when you're finished to release the resources.
It's worth noting that this is a basic example, and in a real-world scenario, you may want to handle errors more gracefully and use prepared statements or an ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) library to interact with the database in a more secure and efficient manner.