Question

My script requires connections to several databases. Some parts only need to connect to one, which is all fine and dandy, however in some cases I need to perform queries on different database in a single script execution.

Currently I’m doing something like this:

function db_connect($which) {
    if($which == "main") {
        $maindb = mysqli_connect(HOSTNAME_1, USER, PASSWORD, MAIN_DB);
        return $maindb;
    } elseif($which == "stats") {
        $statsdb = mysqli_connect(HOSTNAME_2, USER, PASSWORD, STATS_DB);
        return $statsdb;
    }
}


$maindb = db_connect("main");
$statsdb = db_connect("stats");

I maintain the actual hostname, username, password and db name in a config file full of constants.

I then use the respective links on different queries.

Is there a cleaner way to do this?

Answer 1

Quite good, although you shoul try not to duplicate your code :

function db_connect($which) {
    if($which == "main") {
        $host = HOSTNAME_1;
        $db = MAIN_DB;
    } elseif($which == "stats") {
        $host = HOSTNAME_2;
        $db = STATS_DB;
    } else {
        throw new Exception('unknown db');
    }
    return mysqli_connect($host, USER, PASSWORD, $db);
}


$maindb = db_connect("main");
$statsdb = db_connect("stats");