PHP Create MySQL Table
A data table has a unique name and is composed of rows and columns.
Create MySQL Tables Using MySQLi and PDO
The CREATE TABLE statement is used to create a MySQL table.
Before creating the table, we need to use theuse myDBto select the database to operate on:
use myDB;
We will create a table named "MyGuests" with 5 columns: "id", "firstname", "lastname", "email" and "reg_date":
CREATE TABLE MyGuests (
id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(50),
reg_date TIMESTAMP
)
Notes on the table above:
The data type specifies what type of data the column can store. For a complete list of data types, refer to ourData Types Reference Manual。
After setting the data type, you can specify other optional attributes for each column:
- NOT NULL - Each row must contain a value (cannot be empty), null values are not allowed.
- DEFAULT value - Set a default value
- UNSIGNED - Use an unsigned numeric type, 0 and positive numbers
- AUTO INCREMENT - Set the MySQL field's value to automatically increase by 1 each time a new record is added
- PRIMARY KEY - Sets a unique identifier for each record in the data table. Usually the column's PRIMARY KEY is set to the ID value and used together with AUTO_INCREMENT.
Each table should have a primary key (here, the "id" column), and the primary key must contain unique values.
The following examples show how to create a table in PHP:
Example (MySQLi - Object-Oriented)
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";
//Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
//Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed:" . $conn->connect_error);
}
//Create table using sql
$sql = "CREATE TABLE MyGuests (
id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(50),
reg_date TIMESTAMP
)";
if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
echo "Table MyGuests created successfully";
} else {
echo "Error creating table:" . $conn->error;
}
$conn->close();
Example (MySQLi - Procedural)
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";
//Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
//Check connection
if (!$conn) {
die("Connection failed:" . mysqli_connect_error());
}
//Create table using sql
$sql = "CREATE TABLE MyGuests (
id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(50),
reg_date TIMESTAMP
)";
if (mysqli_query($conn, $sql)) {
echo "Table MyGuests created successfully";
} else {
echo "Error creating table:" . mysqli_error($conn);
}
mysqli_close($conn);
Example (PDO)
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDBPDO";
try {
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
//Set PDO error mode to throw exceptions
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
//Create table using sql
$sql = "CREATE TABLE MyGuests (
id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(50),
reg_date TIMESTAMP
)";
//Use exec(), no result is returned
$conn->exec($sql);
echo "Table MyGuests created successfully";
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
echo $sql . "<br>" . $e->getMessage();
}
$conn = null;