How to pass variables in the MySQL connection string in php

Question

I have a txt file which contains the log in credentials separated by newline. I want to pick up data from that file and set the connection string according to that. Here's the code for that.

$db = array(3);
$myFile = "sqlaccess.txt";  
$handle = fopen($myFile, 'r');  
if(!feof($handle))
{
    for($i=0;$i<4;$i++)  
    {  
         $db[$i] = fgets($handle);  
         echo $db[$i];  echo "<br>"; 
    }
}
else
{
     fclose($handle); 
}    
$dbhost = $db[0];
$dbuser = $db[1]; 
$dbpass = $db[2]; 
$dbname = $db[3];

the echo command displays everything correctly as saved in the file. Now the connection string is:

$conn = mysqli_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass, $dbname);

This is not working. Connection fails

but connection is succesful if i hard code this as follows:

$conn = mysqli_connect('localhost','root','password', 'Newdb');

but hardcoding is not a good practice. so What could be going wrong in my code??

Sidenote: I hope you are using proper precautions to guard that text file. Plus, is there a particular reason as to why you would want to use such a method? — Funk Forty Niner
– Funk Forty Niner, Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 13:59
Have you made sure that $db has a value in every index referenced? — JMc
– JMc, Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 14:00
You could just use file() which will return a file as an array, instead of all that extra fopen/for code. — Marc B
– Marc B, Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 14:03
@Fred-ii- Yes I am encrypting that file and decrypting back for reading it. There's no perticular reason as to why I am using this method. I am just learning and trying these things in php. — Anant Vaibhav
– Anant Vaibhav, Commented Nov 21, 2014 at 4:20

user21926 · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-19 14:01:29Z

1

fgets will not strip \n from the returned string, so you either need to trim them yourself:

$db[$i] = trim(fgets($handle));

Or use the file function to replace your read loop:

$db = file('sqlaccess.txt');

If you choose the latter, your code is simplified to:

$myFile = 'sqlaccess.txt';
$db = file($myFile);

$dbhost = $db[0];
$dbuser = $db[1];
$dbpass = $db[2];
$dbname = $db[3];

answered Nov 19, 2014 at 14:01

user21926

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3 Comments

Anant Vaibhav Over a year ago

@Sean Bright Thanks alot. I thot "\0" is causing trouble. Thanks for clearing that up!

user4273579 Over a year ago

Please don't encourage bad practices such as these in the future. While it's a useful answer, he's looking to do something and thinks this is how to do it.

Anant Vaibhav Over a year ago

@iWontStop I appreciate your concern. I am not doing this professionally. Its just for fun. Moreover reading the login credentials from a ".properties" file (instead of hard-coding the credentials as in your method) is a good practice I guess. I will try your method also later. Its my learning phase man. CALM DOWN!

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