MySQL Cookbook

Writing an Object-Oriented MySQL Interface for PHP

Problem

You want an approach for writing PHP scripts that is less tied to PHP’s native MySQL-specific functions.

Solution

Use one of the abstract interfaces that are available, or write your own.

Discussion

You may have noticed that the Perl, Python, and Java operations that connect to the MySQL server each return a value that allows you to process queries in an object-oriented manner. Perl has database and statement handles, Python has connection and cursor objects, and Java uses objects for everything in sight: connections, statements, result sets, and metadata. These object-oriented interfaces all are based on a two-level architecture.

The top level of this architecture provides database-independent methods that implement database access in a portable way that’s the same no matter which database management system you’re using, be it MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or whatever. The lower level consists of a set of drivers, each of which implements the details for a particular database system. The two-level architecture allows application programs to use an abstract interface that is not tied to the details involved with accessing any particular database server. This enhances portability of your programs, because you just select a different lower-level driver to use a different type of database. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, perfect portability can be somewhat elusive:

• The interface methods provided by the top level of the ...