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PDO

"A native mechanism for connecting to databases called PHP data objects, or PDO for short"

Also know as a prepared statement, a PDO provides methods for working with databases, including MySQL databases. Their main asset is to execute the same or similar database statements repeatedly with high efficiency.

Benefits of using PDO's:

  • Access a wide range of DB's
  • Use of exceptions for error handling
  • The overhead of compiling and optimising the statement is incurred only once, although the statement can be executed multiple times.
  • PDO's offer protection against malicious SQL injection attacks
// This creates an object of the PDO class
$db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=shane;port=????", "USERNAME", "PASS");

Example

try {
  // Create object that can connect to the DB
  $db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=shane;port=0000", "USERNAME", "PASS");
  // Throw exceptions when there's an error in the query
  $bd->setAttribute(PDO::ARRT_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
  // Define the character set
  $db->exec("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
} catch(Exception $e) {
  echo "Error connecting to DB";
  exit;
}

try {
  // Using the query method on the PDO to get data
  $results = $db->query("SELECT whatever, whatever2 FROM wherever ORDER BY sku ASC");
} catch(Exception $e) {
  echo "Error retrieving data";
  exit;
}

var_dump($results->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC));

References

PDO Vs. MySQLi: Which should you use? - Envatotuts+