Not Quite a Blog

If you want perl programs to interface with a MySQL database, you will probably want to use the DBD::mysql module. On Mac OS X, there's a few extra things you have to do to get this module to compile correctly. Here's the skinny...

...

I tried installing DBD::mysql via the CPAN shell, but nothing I tried would work (Essentially I wasn't sure how to specify a test database, user and password via the shell for the build).

Here's how to do it with a more traditional perl module install (this is mostly from the following post: "How to Install DBD::mysql on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)"):

1. Make sure you already have MySQL installed itself and that you can get to the MySQL command line.

2. DBD::mysql expects a test database to be present in your MySQL. To set one up, simply get to the MySQL command line via

   mysql -u user -p 
   

   (where user is your favorite MySQL user) and type

   create database test;
   

3. Download the latest DBD::mysql source from this directory. You're looking for something like DBD-mysql-2.9003.tar.gz with a number in the 3.0 range. Unpack the tarball with tar xvfz DBD-mysql-x.xxxx.tar.gz and change directories into the DBD-mysql-x.xxxx directory.

   Note: as commentor Randal Schwartz points out:

   You can skip the "download" and "unpack" steps from directly within the CPAN shell. Just say "look DBD::mysql" and the module will be downloaded from the usual places, unpacked, and then drops you into a shell in that directory.

   You can get to the CPAN shell via typing:

   perl -MCPAN -e shell
   

4. You need to give the Makefile some special parameters... note your MySQL username, password and then type:

   perl Makefile.PL --testdb=test --testuser=username \
   --testpassword=password --testhost=localhost
   

5. Finally, you have to replace a few things in the Makefile... simply do this from the command-line:

   perl -pi -e's/MACOSX/env MACOSX/' Makefile
   

   Note: You don't need to do this using DBD-mysql-3.0002.

6. Now build the dang thing and install it via:

   make
   make test
   sudo make install
   

7. You should look at the output from the make test above carefully as that will give you a good idea if the install is going to work at all.

Please let me know if this didn't work for you or if this is no longer needed.

UPDATE [2005-12-13T14:01:59]: If you upgrade MySQL, you should re-install DBD::mysql or you will get the following error:

Can't connect to database: Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

BONUS: To pass an object's method into a subroutine, do the following:

call_a_lot(10, $some_obj, "methname")
sub call_a_lot {
    my ($count, $widget, $trick) = @_;
    for (my $i = 0; $i < $count; $i++) {
        $widget->$trick();
    }
}

This works great with the DBD's fetchrow_hashref() method.