Could not connect to the database mytable: could not find driver

Question

I had the php version 5 but now i upgraded to php 7 and i am getting problems that a didn't had with the older version.

One that i'm still trying to solve is this:

Could not connect to the database mydatabase :could not find driver (this appear when i run my script).

I tryed to open phpmyadmin and also appeared an error:

The mysqli extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration.

After a lot of search i still can find a solution, is this related to the version of my mysql on xampp? It need to be upgraded too?

Apache version: 2.4 mysqlnd 5.0.12

********************** EDIT***************** Here is the code that makes the connection to database:

    function connection()
{
    $host = 'localhost';
    $dbname = 'mydatabase';
    $username = 'root';
    $password = '';
    try {
        $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;dbname=$dbname;", $username, $password);
        $conn->exec("SET CHARACTER SET utf8");

        // echo "Connected to $dbname at $host successfully.";

    }

    catch(PDOException $pe) {
        die("Could not connect to the database $dbname :" . $pe->getMessage());
        echo "Line: " . __LINE__;
    }

    return $conn;
} //connection

Answer 1

Either install the mysqli driver on your server or use PDO, if that's available. Use this code to find out more information about the installed drivers:

<?php phpinfo() ?>

Answer 2

Go to your php.ini file and uncomment this line

extension=mysqli

Then restart your local server

Answer 3

This was how i solved the problem:

1º rename php.ini-developer to php.ini

2º add extensions :

extension_dir = "D:\Programs\xampp\php\ext"
extension=php_mysqli.dll
extension=pdo_mysql
extension=mbstring
extension=php_mbstring.dll

Working like a charm now!