MySQL Cookbook

Chapter 2. Writing MySQL-Based Programs

Introduction

This chapter discusses how to write programs that use MySQL. It covers basic API operations that are fundamental to your understanding of the recipes in later chapters, such as connecting to the MySQL server, issuing queries, and retrieving the results.

MySQL Client Application Programming Interfaces

This book shows how to write MySQL-based programs using Perl, PHP, Python, and Java, and it’s possible to use several other languages as well. But one thing all MySQL clients have in common, no matter which language you use, is that they connect to the server using some kind of application programming interface (API) that implements a communications protocol. This is true regardless of the program’s purpose, whether it’s a command-line utility, a job that runs automatically on a predetermined schedule, or a script that’s used from a web server to make database content available over the Web. MySQL APIs provide a standard way for you, the application developer, to express database operations. Each API translates your instructions into something the MySQL server can understand.

The server itself speaks a low-level protocol that I call the raw protocol. This is the level at which direct communication takes place over the network between the server and its clients. A client establishes a connection to the port on which the server is listening and communicates with it by speaking the client-server protocol in its most basic terms. (Basically, ...