Fatal Error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect() – PHP5 doesn’t support MySQL by default??!!

This is a follow-up of the post below. I boot up my computer today and tried logging into my PHP site. Nothing appears. Uh, uh. What could be the problem this time? Yesterday it was OK.

So I checked the Apache error log, and found this: “PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect()”. What the….

Googled the problem, and it turns out that PHP 5 does not enable MySQL support by default. Uh uh.. what are they thinking? Why do they don’t automatically enable it like the previous PHP version? Do they think they own PHP? Uh uh.. oh well yes they do.. [Anyway here’s the link to the reasons why they decide not to enable and bundle MySQL by default].

So here’s what I did to remedy the problem, hope it will be of help to anyone out there.

1. Tried adding the MySQL function through PHP’s Windows Add/Remove programs, but it seems the PHP installer doesn’t have this feature. So it seems the easiest is to uninstall PHP, and reinstall PHP back with the MySQL feature.
2. So I run PHP installer, and choose to install all MySQL related function/libraries.
3. Don’t forget to point Apache’s configuration file correctly (httpd.conf) when asked. Mine resides in “I:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf”
4. Complete the installation and restart your computer as suggested by the installer. That’s it.

Alhamdulillah, thank God. My PHP + MySQL + Apache works perfectly well now.

The only thing I hate is, usually all this kind of ‘small’ but annoying and important stuff tends to take a long time to be fixed. (I mean all the installing and uninstalling and restarting the computer part…)