DatabaseSetup

Examples for setting up the database.

Database configuration strings

PDO requires a driver for the database. You can query whether a suitable PDO driver is installed with phpinfo.

The PDO definition must be in a file called "database.php" which is in the "settings" directory.

Below are a few examples.

MySql

define('DATABASE_NAME', 'sphider');
define('TABLE_PREFIX', '');
$db = new PDO('mysql:host=hostname; dbname='.DATABASE_NAME, 'username', 'password');

The hostname, username and password need to be filled in in this query. The database name must be in a separate constant (called DATABASE_NAME) for the table optimization and backup functionality.

If you have only a single database for multiple purposes (some shared-hosting accounts only give you a single MySQL database), you can avoid naming conflicts in the table names by setting the TABLE_PREFIX to some unique string (e.g. "sphider"). All tables that are used by Sphider will get this prefix.

SQLite 3

define('TABLE_PREFIX', '');
define('AUTOINCREMENT, '');
$db = new PDO('sqlite:'.dirname(__FILE__).'/../sphider.sqlite');

The AUTOINCREMENT constant must be set to an empty string (because it is non-empty by default). SQLite does not support the autoincrement keywords (but implicitly defines a primary key to be automatically incremented).

SQLite 2

define('TABLE_PREFIX', '');
define('AUTOINCREMENT, '');
$db = new PDO('sqlite2:'.dirname(__FILE__).'/../sphider.sqlite');

See the case for SQLite 3 for the AUTOINCREMENT constant.

PHP 8.0 and later

PDO error handling switched to exceptions by default, in PHP 8.0 and later. Sphider requires the old default. This can be set with:

$db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_SILENT);    /* needed for PHP 8.x and later */

When using a recent PHP version, this line is typically added right below the $db = new PDO(...) creation, in the "database.php" file.