Question

Think this should be an easy one. I understand how to establish a connection, eg:

$con = mysql_connect("localhost","peter","abc123");

Where localhost is the database type, peter is the user and abc123 the password but how do you specify the actual database? For example, I have 3 databases on my server. How do I specify database2?

Answer 1

As there are so many answers that suggest mysql_select_db('database1'); and its getting more upvotes I’ll try to create a complete answer:

Don’t use mysql_select_db('database1'); !
(You should not use it in new development projects because it is in deprecation process)

Use one of the following ways:

Either you use PDO like this:

<?php
    try {
        $dbh = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test', $user, $pass);
        foreach ($dbh->query('SELECT * from FOO') as $row) {
            print_r($row);
        }
        $dbh = null;
    } catch (PDOException $e) {
        print "Error!: " . $e->getMessage() . "<br/>";
        die();
    }
?>

Or you could use mysqli:

<?php
   $mysqli = new mysqli("127.0.0.1", "user", "password", "database", 3306);
    if ($mysqli->connect_errno) {
        echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: (" . $mysqli->connect_errno . ") " . $mysqli->connect_error;
    }
?>