How to backup MySQL database in PHP?
I don't have a basic understanding of how backup of a MySQL database through PHP would work. I have followed one tutorial but it didn't help me understand.
Can someone explain how to create a MySQL backup from PHP?
While you can execute backup commands from PHP, they don't really have anything to do with PHP. It's all about MySQL.
I'd suggest using the mysqldump utility to back up your database. The documentation can be found here : http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html.
The basic usage of mysqldump is
mysqldump -u user_name -p name-of-database >file_to_write_to.sql
You can then restore the backup with a command like
mysql -u user_name -p <file_to_read_from.sql
Do you have access to cron? I'd suggest making a PHP script that runs mysqldump as a cron job. That would be something like
<?php
$filename='database_backup_'.date('G_a_m_d_y').'.sql';
$result=exec('mysqldump database_name --password=your_pass --user=root --single-transaction >/var/backups/'.$filename,$output);
if(empty($output)){/* no output is good */}
else {/* we have something to log the output here*/}
If mysqldump is not available, the article describes another method, using the SELECT INTO OUTFILE and LOAD DATA INFILE commands. The only connection to PHP is that you're using PHP to connect to the database and execute the SQL commands. You could also do this from the command line MySQL program, the MySQL monitor.
It's pretty simple, you're writing an SQL file with one command, and loading/executing it when it's time to restore.
You can find the docs for select into outfile here (just search the page for outfile). LOAD DATA INFILE is essentially the reverse of this. See here for the docs.
Based on the good solution that provided by tazo todua, I've made some of changes since mysql_connect has deprecated and not supported in new php version. I've used mysqli_connect instead and increased the performance of inserting values to the database:
<?php
/**
* Updated: Mohammad M. AlBanna
* Website: MBanna.info
*/
//MySQL server and database
$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = 'my_user';
$dbpass = 'my_pwd';
$dbname = 'database_name';
$tables = '*';
//Call the core function
backup_tables($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass, $dbname, $tables);
//Core function
function backup_tables($host, $user, $pass, $dbname, $tables = '*') {
$link = mysqli_connect($host,$user,$pass, $dbname);
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
exit;
}
mysqli_query($link, "SET NAMES 'utf8'");
//get all of the tables
if($tables == '*')
{
$tables = array();
$result = mysqli_query($link, 'SHOW TABLES');
while($row = mysqli_fetch_row($result))
{
$tables[] = $row[0];
}
}
else
{
$tables = is_array($tables) ? $tables : explode(',',$tables);
}
$return = '';
//cycle through
foreach($tables as $table)
{
$result = mysqli_query($link, 'SELECT * FROM '.$table);
$num_fields = mysqli_num_fields($result);
$num_rows = mysqli_num_rows($result);
$return.= 'DROP TABLE IF EXISTS '.$table.';';
$row2 = mysqli_fetch_row(mysqli_query($link, 'SHOW CREATE TABLE '.$table));
$return.= "\n\n".$row2[1].";\n\n";
$counter = 1;
//Over tables
for ($i = 0; $i < $num_fields; $i++)
{ //Over rows
while($row = mysqli_fetch_row($result))
{
if($counter == 1){
$return.= 'INSERT INTO '.$table.' VALUES(';
} else{
$return.= '(';
}
//Over fields
for($j=0; $j<$num_fields; $j++)
{
$row[$j] = addslashes($row[$j]);
$row[$j] = str_replace("\n","\\n",$row[$j]);
if (isset($row[$j])) { $return.= '"'.$row[$j].'"' ; } else { $return.= '""'; }
if ($j<($num_fields-1)) { $return.= ','; }
}
if($num_rows == $counter){
$return.= ");\n";
} else{
$return.= "),\n";
}
++$counter;
}
}
$return.="\n\n\n";
}
//save file
$fileName = 'db-backup-'.time().'-'.(md5(implode(',',$tables))).'.sql';
$handle = fopen($fileName,'w+');
fwrite($handle,$return);
if(fclose($handle)){
echo "Done, the file name is: ".$fileName;
exit;
}
}
If you want to backup a database from php script you could use a class for example lets call it MySQL. This class will use PDO (build in php class which will handle the connection to the database). This class could look like this:
<?php /*defined in your exampleconfig.php*/
define('DBUSER','root');
define('DBPASS','');
define('SERVERHOST','localhost');
?>
<?php /*defined in examplemyclass.php*/
class MySql{
private $dbc;
private $user;
private $pass;
private $dbname;
private $host;
function __construct($host="localhost", $dbname="your_databse_name_here", $user="your_username", $pass="your_password"){
$this->user = $user;
$this->pass = $pass;
$this->dbname = $dbname;
$this->host = $host;
$opt = array(
PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION,
PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE => PDO::FETCH_ASSOC
);
try{
$this->dbc = new PDO('mysql:host='.$this->host.';dbname='.$this->dbname.';charset=utf8', $user, $pass, $opt);
}
catch(PDOException $e){
echo $e->getMessage();
echo "There was a problem with connection to db check credenctials";
}
} /*end function*/
public function backup_tables($tables = '*'){ /* backup the db OR just a table */
$host=$this->host;
$user=$this->user;
$pass=$this->pass;
$dbname=$this->dbname;
$data = "";
//get all of the tables
if($tables == '*')
{
$tables = array();
$result = $this->dbc->prepare('SHOW TABLES');
$result->execute();
while($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM))
{
$tables[] = $row[0];
}
}
else
{
$tables = is_array($tables) ? $tables : explode(',',$tables);
}
//cycle through
foreach($tables as $table)
{
$resultcount = $this->dbc->prepare('SELECT count(*) FROM '.$table);
$resultcount->execute();
$num_fields = $resultcount->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM);
$num_fields = $num_fields[0];
$result = $this->dbc->prepare('SELECT * FROM '.$table);
$result->execute();
$data.= 'DROP TABLE '.$table.';';
$result2 = $this->dbc->prepare('SHOW CREATE TABLE '.$table);
$result2->execute();
$row2 = $result2->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM);
$data.= "\n\n".$row2[1].";\n\n";
for ($i = 0; $i < $num_fields; $i++)
{
while($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM))
{
$data.= 'INSERT INTO '.$table.' VALUES(';
for($j=0; $j<$num_fields; $j++)
{
$row[$j] = addslashes($row[$j]);
$row[$j] = str_replace("\n","\\n",$row[$j]);
if (isset($row[$j])) { $data.= '"'.$row[$j].'"' ; } else { $data.= '""'; }
if ($j<($num_fields-1)) { $data.= ','; }
}
$data.= ");\n";
}
}
$data.="\n\n\n";
}
//save filename
$filename = 'db-backup-'.time().'-'.(implode(",",$tables)).'.sql';
$this->writeUTF8filename($filename,$data);
/*USE EXAMPLE
$connection = new MySql(SERVERHOST,"your_db_name",DBUSER, DBPASS);
$connection->backup_tables(); //OR backup_tables("posts");
$connection->closeConnection();
*/
} /*end function*/
private function writeUTF8filename($filenamename,$content){ /* save as utf8 encoding */
$f=fopen($filenamename,"w+");
# Now UTF-8 - Add byte order mark
fwrite($f, pack("CCC",0xef,0xbb,0xbf));
fwrite($f,$content);
fclose($f);
/*USE EXAMPLE this is only used by public function above...
$this->writeUTF8filename($filename,$data);
*/
} /*end function*/
public function recoverDB($file_to_load){
echo "write some code to load and proccedd .sql file in here ...";
/*USE EXAMPLE this is only used by public function above...
recoverDB("some_buck_up_file.sql");
*/
} /*end function*/
public function closeConnection(){
$this->dbc = null;
//EXAMPLE OF USE
/*$connection->closeConnection();*/
}/*end function*/
} /*END OF CLASS*/
?>
Now you could simply use this in your backup.php:
include ('config.php');
include ('myclass.php');
$connection = new MySql(SERVERHOST,"your_databse_name_here",DBUSER, DBPASS);
$connection->backup_tables(); /*Save all tables and it values in selected database*/
$connection->backup_tables("post_table"); /*Saves only table name posts_table from selected database*/
$connection->closeConnection();
Which means that visiting this page will result in backing up your file... of course it doesn't have to be that way :) you can call this method on every post to your database to be up to date all the time, however, I would recommend to write it to one file at all the time instead of creating new files with time()... as it is above.
Hope it helps and good luck ! :>