PHP quick start
At the end of this guide, you will have created a simple PHP Hello, World!
program that connects to the Memgraph database and executes simple queries.
Prerequisites
To follow this guide, you will need:
- A running Memgraph instance. If you need to set up Memgraph, take a look at the Installation guide.
- A basic understanding of graph databases and the property graph model.
- Composer, a tool for dependency management in PHP. Instructions on how to install Composer can be found here.
We recommend using the Bolt driver for PHP.
Basic Setup
We'll be using a very simple PHP script in combination with Composer to demonstrate how to connect to a running Memgraph instance.
Let's jump in and connect a simple program to Memgraph.
1. Create a new directory for your application, for example /MyApp
and
position yourself in it.
2. Create a index.php
file and add the
following code to it:
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
// Create new Bolt instance
$bolt = new \Bolt\Bolt(new \Bolt\connection\StreamSocket());
// Set Bolt protocol version if needed
$bolt->setProtocolVersions(4.0);
// Connect to database
$bolt->init('MyClient/1.0', '', '');
// Execute query
$res = $bolt->run(
'CREATE (a:Greeting) SET a.message = $message RETURN id(a) AS nodeId, a.message AS message',
['message' => 'Hello, World!']
);
// Pull records from last query
$rows = $bolt->pull();
echo 'Node ' . $rows[0][0] . ' says: ' . $rows[0][1];
3. Create a composer.json
file with the following contents:
{
"name": "memgraph/myapp",
"description": "This is a simple Hello World app.",
"require": {
"php": ">=7.1",
"stefanak-michal/bolt": "^2.1"
}
}
4. Execute the next command to install the needed dependencies:
composer install
5. Start the application with the following command:
php -S localhost:4000
You should see an output similar to the following:
Node 1: Hello, World!
Where to next?
For real-world examples of how to use Memgraph, we suggest you take a look at the Tutorials page. You can also browse through the How-to guides section to get an overview of all the functionalities Memgraph offers.