HomePHP Page 10 - PHP Application Development With ADODB (part 1)
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PHP comes with a different API for different database types -whcih usually means a code rewrite every time your databaseadministrator decides to experiment with something new. But fear not -help is at hand, in the unlikely form of ADODB, a powerful databaseabstraction library for PHP applications.
And that's about it for this introductory tutorial. Over the preceding pages, I demonstrated the basics of the ADODB database abstraction library, explaining how it could be used to insulate your code from the impact of a database change and thereby add portability to your PHP application. I showed you the different methods the ADODB library provides to iterate over a resultset, and to convert a resultset into native PHP arrays suitable for further processing. Finally, I demonstrated a number of useful utility functions, most notably functions related to counting rows and columns, retrieving database, table and field information, and escaping special characters prior to inserting them into a database.
All this, of course, constitutes just the tip of the ADODB iceberg - there's a lot more to this library than meets the eye. Tune in next week for the advanced course, when I'll be exploring things like transactions, cached queries, data typing and dynamic menus. Until then...be good!
Note: All examples in this article have been tested on Linux/i586 with PHP 4.2.0, Apache 1.3.12 and ADODB 2.2.0. Examples are illustrative only, and are not meant for a production environment. Melonfire provides no warranties or support for the source code described in this article. YMMV!
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