Choosing an API

PHP offers three different APIs to connect to MySQL. Below we show the APIs provided by the mysql, mysqli, and PDO extensions. Each code snippet creates a connection to a MySQL server running on "example.com" using the username "user" and the password "password". And a query is run to greet the user.

Example #1 Comparing the three MySQL APIs


<?php
// mysqli
$mysqli = new mysqli("example.com", "user", "password", "database");
$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT 'Hello, dear MySQL user!' AS _message FROM DUAL");
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();
echo htmlentities($row['_message']);

// PDO
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=example.com;dbname=database', 'user', 'password');
$statement = $pdo->query("SELECT 'Hello, dear MySQL user!' AS _message FROM DUAL");
$row = $statement->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
echo htmlentities($row['_message']);

// mysql
$c = mysql_connect("example.com", "user", "password");
mysql_select_db("database");
$result = mysql_query("SELECT 'Hello, dear MySQL user!' AS _message FROM DUAL");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
echo htmlentities($row['_message']);
?>

Recommended API

It is recommended to use either the mysqli or PDO_MySQL extensions. It is not recommended to use the old mysql extension for new development, as it was deprecated in PHP 5.5.0 and was removed in PHP 7. A detailed feature comparison matrix is provided below. The overall performance of all three extensions is considered to be about the same. Although the performance of the extension contributes only a fraction of the total run time of a PHP web request. Often, the impact is as low as 0.1%.

Feature comparison

	ext/mysqli	PDO_MySQL	ext/mysql
PHP version introduced	5.0	5.1	2.0
Included with PHP 5.x	Yes	Yes	Yes
Included with PHP 7.x	Yes	Yes	No
Development status	Active	Active	Maintenance only in 5.x; removed in 7.x
Lifecycle	Active	Active	Deprecated in 5.x; removed in 7.x
Recommended for new projects	Yes	Yes	No
OOP Interface	Yes	Yes	No
Procedural Interface	Yes	No	Yes
API supports non-blocking, asynchronous queries with mysqlnd	Yes	No	No
Persistent Connections	Yes	Yes	Yes
API supports Charsets	Yes	Yes	Yes
API supports server-side Prepared Statements	Yes	Yes	No
API supports client-side Prepared Statements	No	Yes	No
API supports Stored Procedures	Yes	Yes	No
API supports Multiple Statements	Yes	Most	No
API supports Transactions	Yes	Yes	No
Transactions can be controlled with SQL	Yes	Yes	Yes
Supports all MySQL 5.1+ functionality	Yes	Most	No