I needed a flash response to a recent personal project demand that required PHP and MySQL. As such, I needed to start coding ASAP a flash install of both platforms was in order. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide to get PHP and MySQL running on your computer:

1. Go to the official PHP Internet Information Services Site http://php.iis.net/
2. Click the big button to install PHP using Microsoft Web Application Gallery. If you don’t have it already installed, it will be installed first.
3. Follow the onscreen instructions.
4. Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services.
5. Open “Default Web Site”
6. Double click on “Server Components > Handler Mappings”
7. Confirm if *.php extension is now handled by PHP FastCGI.

Here are some images of the entire process:









You’re done! Add a new Application to IIS and you’re ready to go!

Now, in order to install MySQL databse onto your system, you first need to download the MySQL Community Edition, (the freely downloadable version) from the MySQL Developer downloads webpage. At the time of this writing, the current version is 5.1 and 5.4 is available as a beta version. For instance, if you have a 64bit OS, install the following: mysql-5.1.40-winx64.msi. For 32bit OS choose mysql-5.1.40-winx64.msi.

Follow the on screen instructions. When asked, select standard installation and a root password at your discretion.

When the installation is finished, goto Start –> Programs –> MySQL > MySQL Server 5.1 > MySQL Command Line Client (mysql). mysql is a simple SQL shell. It supports interactive and non-interactive use. When used interactively, query results are presented in an ASCII-table format. When used non-interactively (for example, as a filter), the result is presented in tab-separated format. The output format can be changed using command options.

Now, let’s setup our first database. We can list all currently installed databases by inputting the following command:

show databases \g

Notice the “\g” keyword. This is like the “GO” command in SQL Server. It orders the engine to execute the previous command. After the command is executed you’ll notice a database called mysql. This is a system database, and you shouldn’t mess around with it. For instance you can check all system tables in mysql database with the following command:

show tables in mysql \g

You’ll also notice a database named “test”. This is a sample database that you can use for testing purposes.

When creating your database we must assign the required user permissions for us to access it from our data client. So I’ll create a new user called JohnDoe with a custom password by inputting the following command:

create user ‘JohnDoe’ identified as ‘password’ \g

Now for the database. There’s a useful command that gives you the SQL syntax for database creation. If you execute the following:

show create database test\g

… it will show the necessary SQL syntax to create the test database. We’ll create a database called “MyDatabase”:

create database MyDatabase \g

And now, all there is to do is give Mr JohnDoe a green card on our database, by giving it full access permissions:

grant all on table MyDatabase.* to JohnDoe identified by ‘password’ \g

If all goes well, you should receive

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0,00 sec)

Later, in case you want to delete your database, this is the command:

drop database ‘MyDatabase’ \g

And that’s it. You’re all set to start working with Php and MySql.