Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS, 2nd Edition

Accessing MySQL via the Command Line

There are three main ways in which you can interact with MySQL: using a command line, via a web interface such as phpMyAdmin, and through a programming language like PHP. We’ll start doing the third of these in Chapter 10, but for now, let’s look at the first two.

Starting the Command-Line Interface

The following sections describe relevant instructions for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Windows users

If you installed the Zend Server CE WAMP as explained in Chapter 2, you will be able to access the MySQL executable from one of the following directories (the first on 32-bit computers, and the second on 64-bit machines):

C:\Program Files\Zend\MySQL51\bin
C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\MySQL51\bin

Note

If you installed Zend Server CE in a place other than \Program Files (or \Program Files (x86)), you will need to use that directory instead.

By default, the initial MySQL user will be root and will not have had a password set. Seeing as this is a development server that only you should be able to access, we won’t worry about creating one yet.

So, to enter MySQL’s command-line interface, select Start→Run and enter CMD into the Run box, then press Return. This will call up a Windows Command prompt. From there, enter one of the following (making any appropriate changes as just discussed):

"C:\Program Files\Zend\MySQL51\bin\mysql" -u root
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\MySQL51\bin\mysql" -u root

Note

Note the quotation marks surrounding the path and filename. These ...