php-PDO-MySQL versus php-mysql

PHP and MySQL was the duo that took dynamic web development from /cgi/formmail.cgi to… well, where we are today for me. My first proper experience of working with a web application, as opposed to a static web site with a few perl scripts bolted on was PHPNuke, and I’ve not looked back since.

Almost the first lines of PHP you learn to code are

<?php
mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "");
mysql_use_db("mysite");

Followed closely by mysql_query(), then mysql_fetch_array(), mysl_num_rows(), and if the rest of us are lucky, mysql_real_escape_string().

So you see, for me, it’s really weird to find that even though this is what we’re teaching everyone to use, this weird incantation where we have to wrap every query up in a cotton wool ball of SQL injection protection… there’s an easier way where you don’t have to wrapper everything, which, even better, is more efficient at your SQL server and, if you’ve made the transition to using Classes in your code, will give you an object per-result rather than an array.

Let’s look at some examples of code, and see how we would transition things.

Here’s some rather unoriginal code to get the contents of a user table.

<?php
$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "");
mysql_use_db("mysite");
$sql = "select userid, realname, lastloggedin from users "
     . "where username = '" . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['username'])
     . "' and password = '" . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['password']) . "'";
$query = mysql_query($sql);
$data = false;
if (mysql_num_rows($query) == 1) {
  $data = mysql_fetch_array($query);
  echo "Hello {$data['realname']}, your userid is {$data['userid']} and "
     . "you last logged in at " . date("H:i:s", strtotime($data['lastloggedin']))
     . " on " . date("d-M-Y" , strtotime($data['lastloggedin']));
}

There, now there’s not much wrong with that (ignoring the security hole of having your passwords in cleartext) is there? All pretty readable, right? Well… what happens if your database is down, how do you handle that in some kind of sensible way? You need to wrap some code around the mysql_connect to show it actually connected. What about if someone dropped the database by mistake, or you connected to the wrong database server and that table wasn’t there, now you’re wrappering the use_db line too. Did you make a typo in the SQL? Are you sure you didn’t miss a mysql_real_escape_string in there somewhere…

Here’s the same thing in PDO, protected against all (again, except the cleartext password) of those things.

<?php
try {
  $db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mysite", "root", "");
  $db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
  $sql = "select userid, realname, lastloggedin from users where username = ? and password = ?";
  $query = $db->prepare($sql);
  $query->execute(array($_POST['username'], $_POST['password']));
  $data = $query->fetch();
  if ($data != false) {
    echo "Hello {$data['realname']}, your userid is {$data['userid']} and "
       . "you last logged in at " . date("H:i:s", strtotime($data['lastloggedin']))
       . " on " . date("d-M-Y" , strtotime($data['lastloggedin']));
  }
} catch (PDOException $e) {
  error_log("User unable to login: " . $e->getMessage());
}

So, let’s look at what transforms this into something much more interesting: $query->fetchObject();

<?php
try {
  $db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mysite", "root", "");
  $db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
  $sql = "select userid, realname, lastloggedin, username, password " 
       . "from users where username = ? and password = ?";
  $query = $db->prepare($sql);
  $query->execute(array($_POST['username'], $_POST['password']));
  $data = $query->fetchObject('user');
  if ($data != false) {
    echo $data;
  }
} catch (PDOException $e) {
  error_log("User unable to login: " . $e->getMessage());
}

class user
{
  // Columns from the database
  protected $userid = null;
  protected $realname = null;
  protected $lastloggedin = null;
  protected $username = null;
  protected $password = null;
  // Processed Data
  protected $transformed_lastloggedin = null

  public function __construct()
  {
    if ($this->lastloggedin != null) {
      $this->transformed_lastloggedin = date("H:i:s", strtotime($this->lastloggedin)) 
                             . " on " . date("d-M-Y" , strtotime($this->lastloggedin);
    }
  }

  public function toString()
  {
    echo "Hello {$this->realname}, your userid is {$this->userid} and " 
       . "you last logged in at {$this->transformed_lastloggedin}";
  }
}

I’m starting to stretch the analogy here a little, but the important things here are:

1. The __construct() function of the class is run after the data is inserted into it, meaning you can post-process any data you receive from the database without needing any new functions. Arguably, you could make the construct function accept the same values you’d receive from the database, and process those in the same way.
2. The toString() function means you can mangle the content you want to output, without having to apparently run another function on the class you’ve just created.
3. By using classes you get to do wonderful things like Unit Testing (this is a topic to follow), have automatic code documentation (err… to follow), reduce code duplication by extending classes and check on that, using “Copy and Paste Detection”.