mahara-contributors team mailing list archive

[Aaron Wells <1187964@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The adodb mysqli driver requires a different PHP library than the adodb
mysql driver:

mysql uses the "original PHP mysql library": http://nz1.php.net/manual/en/book.mysql.php
mysqli uses the "Mysql Improved" library: http://nz1.php.net/manual/en/book.mysqli.php

Since it's conceivable some people might have the first one and not the
newer one installed on their computer, we should:

1. Keep the old mysql driver around for at least 1 release
2. In config.php, make "mysqli" refer to the mysqli driver and "mysql5" refer to the current driver.
3. Add an admin screen warning suggesting that they change their DB driver from mysql5 to mysqli.

I'm also going to change the recommended postgres config name from
"postgres8" to just "postgres". And I will add an undocumented "mysql"
that points to "mysqli". Then when we drop support for the mysql5 driver
at some point in the future, we can tell people to just set "mysql" or
"postgres".

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1187964

Title:
  Use adodb "mysqli" instead of "mysql"

Status in Mahara ePortfolio:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Mahara is currently using the adodb "mysql" driver for MySQL
  connections. This is based on an older PHP library which is no longer
  in active development and lacks certain features, most notably
  transactions (see for instance
  https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=5434 ).

  We should probably switch to the adodb "mysqli" driver, which is built
  on the newer mysqli PHP library and *does* support transactions.

  There are two ways we could go about this gracefully:

  1. When a user supplies the string "mysql5" in their config.php file,
  we could silently interpret this to mean that they want to use the
  "mysqli" driver. (We could alternately provide some other way to
  indicate they want to use the older "mysql" library if we really want
  to support it.)

  2. OR, we could show the admin a warning message after they
  upgrade/install, which tells them they should really change the
  "mysql5" in their config.php to "mysqli".

  I support option #1. Given that we only support mysql and postgres,
  there's no reason we shouldn't abstract away the connection between
  config.php and the name of the underlying adodb driver. (For that
  matter, we should probably change the recommended dbtypes from
  "mysql5" and "postgres8" to just "mysql" and "postgres").

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