MySQL PHP Database Tutorial: Getting Started

Getting started with a database means first figuring out what you want to do. What is the nature of your data? How you want to use the data? What are the relationships between the different data elements? These questions and others are used for database design.

Our project in this tutorial is to build a database which manages links to web sites. I want to be able to add, edit and remove links in the database as well as display links from the database. I want the links to be categorized so I can display groups of links, instead of all links at once.

I want to record the following data for each link in the database:

• Name of site
• URL of site
• Description of site
• Link Category

Each of these will become one column in a table in the database. If you are not familiar with databases, a table can be thought of somewhat as a spreadsheet in Excel. The columns in a spreadsheet relate to the columns in a database. Each row in the spreadsheet would be considered a record (or row) in the database. There can also be multiple spreadsheets in a single Excel file, as there can be multiple tables in one database.

This application could use two tables, one table to store all of the categories and another table to store all the links, with a link back to the categories table. Because this is a beginner tutorial, I keep it simple by using just one table to store the info.

Moving on, I know what the application should do, and what data will be stored in the database. The next step is to create the database.

Related Links:

Databases from Scratch — a good introduction to simple and relational databases design, and to databases in general.

Introduction to Relational Database Design — a slightly more technical look at relational databases and how they are used. Uses mSQL. Knowledge of SQL is a plus for reading this one.

Sections to My MySQL PHP Database Tutorial

• Getting Started (this page)

• Create Database

• Insert Data into DB

• View Data from DB

• Manage Data