CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wordpress
Brian Jenkins
Brian Jenkins

Reputation: 437

Another database connection in wordpress

So part of my layout for my theme needs to query a database other than the database made for wordpress. I figured I would query the other database like normal. I wrote a quick function to take care of it:

function my_function() {
  $con = mysql_connect("localhost", "user", "password");
  mysql_select_db("database", $con);
  $result = mysql_query("my query");
  mysql_close($con);
  $all = array();

  while ($all[] = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {}
  return $all;
}

I'm referencing the function in my header and realized it is breaking the categories in my sidebar. What's going on? I closed the connection I thought. What am I doing wrong? The error I get for the categories is this:

Warning: mysql_error(): 14 is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /blog/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1098

Upvotes: 2

Views: 10992

Answers (1)

postpostmodern
postpostmodern

Reputation: 1986

Is your custom database on the same mysql as the wordpress database? Then you can still use the $wpdb object: 

global $wpdb;
$wpdb->get_results( "SELECT * FROM brian_db.brian_table" );

Even if you can't do that, I'd still recommend using the Wordpress Database class for the sake of consistency, you can set up a new connection in that function:

$wpdb_b = new wpdb( "user", "password", "brian_db", "localhost" );
$wpdb_b->get_results( "SELECT * FROM brian_table" );

update: corrected "global"

Upvotes: 12

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