Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Summary
An API is very useful to create programs for users who don't know how to use MySQL, or
users for whom you don't want to access MySQL directly. It provides you a much higher
level of security and control over users, especially unknown users accessing your databases
through the Web. Additionally, when MySQL doesn't have a function to get information
you want from a database, you can write an API program to accomplish what you want and
to supplement MySQL. As a result, the APIs are very powerful tools for customizing
MySQL and MariaDB.
The API programs we reviewed in this chapter select data from a database, and some insert
or update data in a database. Some were very simple and some were much more involved.
We did very little error checking and performed only simple tasks. Despite how basic and
minimal some of the examples were, they should be sufficient to give you an idea of how
to write an API program to connect with MySQL and MariaDB and to query a database.
The rest is a matter of knowing the related programming language and MySQL well, and
using the many API functions available to make better applications. To that end, at the end
of each section, you were given suggestions on learning more about each API.
