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.

note

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 a connection class and specify target host and port, default is localhost.
$conn = new \Bolt\connection\Socket();
// Create a new Bolt instance and provide connection object.
$bolt = new \Bolt\Bolt($conn);
// Set available Bolt versions for Memgraph.
$bolt->setProtocolVersions(4.1, 4, 3);
// Build and get protocol version instance which creates connection and executes handshake.
$protocol = $bolt->build();
// Login to database with credentials.
$protocol->hello(\Bolt\helpers\Auth::basic('username', 'password'));

// Pipeline two messages. One to execute query with parameters and second to pull records.
$protocol
    ->run('CREATE (a:Greeting) SET a.message = $message RETURN id(a) AS nodeId, a.message AS message', ['message' => 'Hello, World!'])
    ->pull();

// Server responses are waiting to be fetched through iterator.
$rows = iterator_to_array($protocol->getResponses(), false);
// Get content from requested record.
$row = $rows[1]->getContent();

echo 'Node ' . $row[0] . ' says: ' . $row[1];

If you need SSL connection you have to replace Socket instance with StreamSocket and enable SSL with additional method.

$conn = new \Bolt\connection\StreamSocket('URI or IP', 7687);
$conn->setSslContextOptions([
    'verify_peer' => true
]);

If you want to connect to Memgraph Cloud you have to set these parameters.

$conn = new \Bolt\connection\StreamSocket('URI or IP', 7687);
$conn->setSslContextOptions([
    'peer_name' => 'Memgraph DB',
    'allow_self_signed' => true
]);

3. Run a composer command to get the required library:

composer require stefanak-michal/memgraph-bolt-wrapper

It will auto create composer.json file.

4. Start the application with the following command:

php -S localhost:4000

Open you browser, enter localhost:4000 as URL and you should see an output similar to the following:

Node 1 says: Hello, World!

Where to next?

Check out the PHP Bolt driver repository to learn more about using the PHP Bolt library.

You can simplify usage of this library with wrapper Memgraph Bolt wrapper.

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.