Question

I have a MySQL database set up on 000webhost.com. I want to access the data in my database via PHP. I tried:

<?php 

include("connect.php");
mysql_select_db("XXXXXXX_users", $con) or die(mysql_error()); 

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM data ORDER BY id DESC");
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))     
{
    $id = $row['id'];
    $user = $row['usrname'];
} 


echo "$user";
?>

But it always returns as: “A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.”

What do I do?

• I do not have root access
• I’m trying to run the script on Apache

Answer 1

When debugging this sort of thing, it’s always good to make sure you can connect using the command line mysql tool first, to rule out issues related to PHP itself.

$ mysql -u myuser -h mysql.example.com -p

You’ll get a more descriptive error message as well, e.g. ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'remote.example.com' (using password: YES)

If the mysql port is even open on a public interface to begin with (which is usually a terrible idea), mysql itself has its own layer of access control based on the connecting host. You may need to have an account created specifically with a wildcard hostname, like so:

CREATE USER 'myuser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';

The @'%' part, specifically, allows connection from any host, local or remote.

Once you can successfully connect from the command line, it’s then a simple issue of replicating your command line arguments as arguments to mysql_connect()