cannot connect to mysql using mysqli in php script

Question

I am new to php. I am trying to connect to SQLEXPRESS server using mysqli from php script. Here is my code:

<?php
$servername = "localhost";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername,"root","");

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
    } 
echo "Connected successfully";

?>

I get an error that the target machine actively refuses the connection. My server is listening connections on port 63083. When I enter the port number in $servername:

 $servername = "localhost:63083";

then the script does not respond and after a few minutes I get an error that MySQL server has gone away. I would really appreciate some help in this regard.

Thanks

Answer 1

You cannot connect to an SQLEXPRESS server using PHP's mysqli . SQLEXPRESS has its own method of connecting with PHP. mysqli is only for MySQL servers.

Reference: http://www.sitepoint.com/sql-server-php/