PHP Create MySQL Tables
A database table has its own unique name and consists of columns and rows.
Create a MySQL Table Using MySQLi and PDO
The CREATE TABLE statement is used to create a table in MySQL.
We will create a table named "MyGuests", with five 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 hold. For a complete reference of all the available data types, go to our Data Types reference.
After the data type, you can specify other optional attributes for each column:
- NOT NULL - Each row must contain a value for that column, null values are not allowed
- DEFAULT value - Set a default value that is added when no other value is passed
- UNSIGNED - Used for number types, limits the stored data to positive numbers and zero
- AUTO INCREMENT - MySQL automatically increases the value of the field by 1 each time a new record is added
- PRIMARY KEY - Used to uniquely identify the rows in a table. The column with PRIMARY KEY setting is often an ID number, and is often used with AUTO_INCREMENT
Each table should have a primary key column (in this case: the "id" column). Its value must be unique for each record in the table.
The following examples shows how to create the table in PHP:
Example (MySQLi Object-oriented)
<?php
$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);
}
// sql to create table
$sql = "CREATE TABLE MyGuests (
id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(50),
reg_date TIMESTAMP
)";
if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
echo "Table MyGuests created successfully";
} else {
echo "Error creating table: " . $conn->error;
}
$conn->close();
?>
Example (MySQLi Procedural)
<?php
$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());
}
// sql to create table
$sql = "CREATE TABLE MyGuests (
id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(50),
reg_date TIMESTAMP
)";
if (mysqli_query($conn, $sql)) {
echo "Table MyGuests created successfully";
} else {
echo "Error creating table: " . mysqli_error($conn);
}
mysqli_close($conn);
?>
Example (PDO)
<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDBPDO";
try {
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
// set the PDO error mode to exception
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
// sql to create table
$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() because no results are returned
$conn->exec($sql);
echo "Table MyGuests created successfully";
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
echo $sql . "<br>" . $e->getMessage();
}
$conn = null;
?>
