Question

I am looking for a way to implement MySQL and Perl to make a program. Where I’m lost is that I have a .sql file, that creates 3 tables for the Perl program to use. How do you:

1) Execute the file fileName.sql in Perl to create the tables

2) Link those created tables into manipulable variables in Perl Program (like an example being able to add a user to one of the tables)

Answer 1

In Perl you use the DBI database interface. In your case, you will also be using something like the DBD::MySQL driver.

There is lots of help available on this topic (including lots of questions on this site).

As for the specific question of your .sql file, there are a few approaches you could take, depending on how fancy you want to get:

• You could just copy and paste the commands into your program as you write it.
• You could execute an external program that will run the .sql file (for example, by using system()).
• You could programmatically read in the .sql file and send the commands from within your program. A module could help you with this (I found SQL::Script on CPAN, which looks useful, though I don’t have any experience with it).

I suggest you pick an approach, try it, and ask if you have any specific problems.