Accessing a non-WP MySQL database from inside WP?
I want to be able to query a non-WordPress MySQL database from within WP. Is this a safe practice, or will it break WP? Is there a good "best-practice" way to do this to make sure the databases don't get confused?
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You just have to use normal mysql db connection code.
I do this all the time, you can use the global $wpdb class to prepare and get_var etc
if your other database has the same user/password details as your wp one (like a global access details) then you can just reference the table in the non-wp database by using databasename.tablename in the FROM statement like this
$query = $wpdb->prepare('SELECT somevar FROM somedb.sometable WHERE someothervar = %d AND evenonemorevar = %s AND somevartitle = %s LIMIT 1',$intnum,'string',$stringvar);
$wpdb->get_col($query);
or
$wpdb->get_results($query);
etc.
if the non-wp db and the wp-db are using different access details, you should be able to add the wp db user to the non-wp db and $wpdb should be quite happy to access data from both.
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Very clever! Didn't think about that.
Keeper of the Dark Chocolate
We just hard code in the mysql commands.
