[PHP-INTERNALS] deprecating ext/mysql

sounds reasonable and i would love to be not forced loading
"mysql.so" AND "mysqli.so" because some peopole are using
legacy code and unwilling to maintain their stuff

Sure, some users in the PHP community are aware of this desire.

We're talking about tons of developers, vast amounts of legacy code
written over 2 decades - longer than many in that same community have
been alive.

Most developers "out there" are not remotely aware of this.

IMHO, it doesn't matter how early the education gets started or how
much time and sugar is used to coat this, it'll be a bitter pill for
a very large group of people.

This needs to be thought out very carefully.

Best Regards,

Mike Robinson

hi,

As I would love to kill ext/mysql, it is up to the mysql developers to decide.

Cheers,

Big +1 from me. We actually chose not to do a Mysql adapter in Zend_Db
primarily due to the security issues, but also due to the much more
advanced feature sets available in the mysqli and pdo/mysql adapters.

I'm hugely +1 on this. (Which won't be a shock to anyone on IRC.) It's
time to start softening the user base up for the idea that, one day,
ext/mysql will in fact go away, and probably won't be terribly
mourned.

Adam

maybe we should get another E_, E_NEARLY_DEPRECATED that way we can set this
to that, and then 5.5 we can move it to E_DEPRECATED, that way people have
to go read the docs, the amount of people even those who have been in the
field for years, that dont know about php.net/<func> and still look stuff up
on google makes me wonder that no matter how soft you make the change by
doing it in the docs, wont make that much difference to how people react to
it being dropped

+1, though check with the MySQL folk about whether they want mysqli or pdo_mysql to
be the recommended path.

Chris

Yes, +1 from me too. I do indeed think we need to make this a smooth
transition over time. Possibly triggering an E_DEPRECATED for all
ext/mysql usage. Just like the introduction of E_DEPRECATED for 5.3
functions, we could apply the same approach here. After 5.4 is
released we can put big "Deprecated Warning" notifications on all
php.net/mysql_* functions too. I think we all want this, but to be
realistic from a production point of view, many sites will still be
using ext/mysql.

Regards,
Paul Dragoonis.

And, to my reading, this is exactly the path that was recommended. The
point is to start a "soft" deprecation now via the manual, indicating
that users should migrate to other solutions, while simultaneously
detailing how to do equivalent operations via ext/mysqli or pdo_mysql.
Actual deprecation would happen later.

I haven't looked at the mysql_* section of the manual in 15 years. It
would not surprise me to learn that that was one of the least viewed
areas of manual.

I'd be curious to see what kind of response this suggestion would elicit
from the PHP General list.

From the MySQL site:

"We have no plans to remove libmysql support from ext/mysql, ext/mysqli
or PDO_MYSQL, which would break existing applications. We just add a new,
superior alternative to our PHP offerings."

So I'd also be interested to hear what the MySQL folks had to say about
this.

If a laissez-faire approach is taken a lot of people are going to have
bite marks on their behinds.

Mike

A-frickin'-men! :-)

Just today I was talking to a new developer in #PHP in IRC who had code
with mysql_* calls in it. I don't know where he found them, but I told
him to put them back where he found them right away and use PDO
instead. That people are still learning ext/mysql in this day and age
is quite sad.

There's millions of lines of code out there we can't break yet, but we
can absolutely structure documentation so that we don't produce even
more PHP developers who mistakenly think that mysql_query() is a good idea.

+1

--Larry Garfield

Hi,
Moving away from ext/mysql is not only about security but also about
having access to all features of the MySQL database.

ext/mysql was built for MySQL 3.23 and only got very few additions since
then while mostly keeping compatibility with this old version which
makes the code a bit harder to maintain. From top of my head missing
features not support be ext/mysql include:
* Stored Procedures (can't handle multiple result sets)
* Prepared Statements
* Encryption (SSL)
* Compression
* Full Charset support
* ...
*

So moving away from ext/mysql is a good thing.
I'm not sure the current PDO is "the" alternative. We (= MySQL/ORACLE)
focus mostly on mysqli, that's the extension providing access to all
current and future features of MySQL. True, many features could be added
to PDO but there are two design decision in PDO which make this bad:

* The parser used for identifying statement place holders is very
basic, as it is implemented in PDO core, not the drivers, which
leads to FRs like #54929 or the famous LIKE issue[1]
* driver-specific functions are implemented by using __call()
which means there is no good introspection mechanism to check
whether a feature is available or not in the current setup.

Besides these two items there are every now and then reports on
PDO_mysql which in fact are caused by limitations in the PDO design
which can't be bypassed by the driver implementation.

A good abstraction layer would certainly be good for the language but
for now we (=MySQL/ORACLE) consider mysqli the preference.
I also want to point to http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Converting_to_MySQLi
wich has a script once developed by Ulf and others to automatically
convert code from using ext/mysql to mysqli. I haven't tried it with
recent versions of PHP but should still work.
:-)

johannes


[1] The LIKE case goes something like that:

<?php
$query = $pdo->prepare("SELECT id FROM table LIMT ?, ?");
$query->bindValue(1, $_GET["offset"]);
$query->bindValue(2, $_GET["limit"]);
$query->execute();
?>

So there's some pagination of a result set and the user can browse
through the result, looks quite ok, but the result is not a successful
query but an error

1064 you have an error in oyur SQL sytax; check the manual that
corresponds to your MySQK server version for the right syntax to
use near ''1', '2''

Which is caused by PDO using PS emulation by default with MySQL (see
thread "Change Request: Make PDO default to not emulate prepared
statements for MySQL" from April/May 2011 on this list) and $_GET
containing strings while the parser is not context-aware. Of course this
can easily be fixed by explicitly binding using PDO::PARAM_INT.

not true
client_flags and MYSQL_CLIENT_COMPRESS exists sine nearly 10 years

this is a feature which currently sucks with mysqlnd
because it is not supported this time

Not true.

Compressed Protocol Support

As of PHP 5.3.2 MySQL Native Driver supports the compressed client
server protocol. [...], http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqlnd.overview.php

Ulf

compression support was added for mysqlnd with r291051 on 2009-11-20
09:12:14 +0100 which translates to 5.3.2, I think.

johannes

Hola friends,

Nice feedback so far, and the PHP documentation will begin implementing
the ideas presented here, and focus on mysqli but also recommend pdo_mysql.
Therefore, the ext/mysql documentation will be improved to strongly
recommend the preferred alternatives that have existed since PHP 5.0.0.

We'll work on the finer details but it feels like procedural mysqli is a
better fit to live alongside the ext/mysql examples, although we don't want
to confuse people. Maybe geeks here have ideas regarding this, but a clear
useful clutter-free solution will be worked out, which may include adjusting
the CSS and involve creative linking. I'll add an example or three soonish.

However, there has been some confusion within the PHP community, so to help
ease these concerns:

- This proposal only deals with documentation/education... so it can be
described as an official 'soft deprecation' (no errors or code changes)
- When (if?) this extension emits errors, or is removed, is not part of
this proposal
- There is a 100% chance that additional tasks and ideas will be discussed
in the future, which might include:
- A conversion tool/guide
- A wrapper
- A PECL extension
- Talking to distros/hosters and apps like wordpress
- ...
- php.net understands that ext/mysql is popular, and we're handling this
with extra care and heck, parts of *.php.net is powered by ext/mysql
- Seriously, no need to panic

We'll document the reasons why the other MySQL extensions are preferred, but
if people want to use the old ext/mysql API with PHP 9.0.0 (just an example)
then I'm guessing an old geek out there will make that possible. We, however,
will do our best to convince users to move towards the preferred and
supported methods, and hopefully write better code along the way because
honestly, that's the ultimate goal here.

Regards,
Philip

I agree with Johannes and Oracle/MySQL people : ext/mysqli must be the
preferred way to replace ext/mysql.
PDO lacks advanced features which wont be available because of PDO
internals incompatibility.

ext/mysqli is a true MySQL internal API exposure into PHP user land, PDO is not.

Moreover, ext/mysqli has a userland API that is really the same as
ext/mysql one; it's been a design rule of ext/mysqli to ease a future
migration.
PDO is really different and needs objects, not every single PHP
developper is ready to use object nowadays.

Julien.P



2011/7/16 Philip Olson <philip@roshambo.org>: