If you have a mysql database you can connect to, you can create tables, rows, columns, and do many other mysql functions through PHP. Let’s say we have a mysql database named “my_database”. We will connect to it using the php function “mysql_connect()” and draw information from the tables.

Config.php:

<?php
// Config.php

$username = "my_username";
$password = "my_password";
$db_name = "my_database";

$connect = mysql_connect("localhost",$username,$password) or die('Could not connect to database.');
$select_db = mysql_select_db($db_name) or die('Unable to select specified database.');

?>

This is usually placed in a config.php file and is included or required on other pages that execute mysql queries.

Now let’s move on to our query file. Let’s say we have a table named “table1.” We will insert the config file to have the connection to the database, and then select columns from the table1.

<?php
// Query.php

require_once('config.php');

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT col1,col2,col3 FROM table1") or die(mysql_error());
$count = mysql_num_rows($sql);

// check to see if there are any rows returned.
if($count > 0){
// we have some!

// this is used to grab all rows in the table.
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql)){
echo 'Col1: '.$row['col1'].'<br/>';
echo 'Col2: '.$row['col2'].'<br/>';
echo 'Col3: '.$row['col3'].'<br/><br/>';
}
} else {
// nothing found.
echo 'No rows found.';
}

?>

Now, this will return simple HTML of each row with col1: (its value), col2: (its value), etc. We can get fancy and use a table to organize our information better. Here is an example:

if($count > 0){
// we have some, make the table!
echo '<table width="100%" align="center" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0">';
echo '<tr><td align="left"><strong>Col1</strong></td><td align="left"><strong>Col2</strong></td><td align="left"><strong>Col3</strong></td></tr>';

// this is used to grab all rows in the table.
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql)){
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td align="left"> '.$row['col1'].'</td>';
echo '<td align="left"> '.$row['col2'].'</td>';
echo '<td align="left"> '.$row['col3'].'</td>';
echo '</tr>';
}
} else {
// nothing found.
echo 'No rows found.';
}

This will display something like this:

Popularity: 2% [?]