Simple SQL Search Using PHP and MySQL

Database Connection
Now that we have our data entered into MySQL and made sure our PHP Server works it is time to start writing code. I would recommend a decent PHP Editor, Notepad++ for a simple project like this, or for a major project I would choose NetBeans IDE. Those are just the editors I recommend, feel free to choose whichever editor you are comfortable with. Now onto the code.

First up, we have to make a connection to the database. Since MySQLi is not on servers with a PHP version < 5 I will use MySQL to write out the database connections.

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<?php
$dbHost = 'localhost'; // localhost will be used in most cases
// set these to your mysql database username and password.
$dbUser = 'searchuser'; 
$dbPass = 'searchpass';
$dbDatabase = 'searchdb'; // the database you put the table into.
$con = mysql_connect($dbHost, $dbUser, $dbPass) or trigger_error("Failed to connect to MySQL Server. Error: " . mysql_error());
 
mysql_select_db($dbDatabase) or trigger_error("Failed to connect to database {$dbDatabase}. Error: " . mysql_error());
?>

Remember to change the $dbUser, $dbPass, $dbDatabase and $dbHost to the values of your database. If you do not the script will error out and tell you what is wrong.