Connect to Additional Database?

[glen58]

Hello,

I've added zen cart in a subfolder to an already created site that has a CMS system. I need to add some links at the top of the Zen Cart store that are auto-generated from another database, i.e. the CMS system of the mother site. When I connect to the other database in zen cart, zen cart breaks down apparently not being able to connect to its database after I connect to mine. I've changed my connection Constants to make sure they are not the same as the ones Zen Cart uses, but apparently that's not the problem.

Is it possible to connect to an additional database from within Zen Cart? I've simply added the connection to the top of "tpl_main_page.php".

Thanks for your help.

Glen

[glen58]

For anyone else wondering. I figured this out after doing some searching:

After opening a connection to a second database the easiest thing to do is to use:

mysql_select_db('database_name');

to select the database you want to use. In the case of Zen Cart after connecting to my db, doing what I want and then ending I just reconnect to the Zen Cart db.

For Example:

mysql_connect(my database);

my code to get stuff from my database;

mysql_select_db('zen_cart_db_name');

If I need my db again I just use a similar format.

mysql_select_db('my_database');

my code to get stuff from my database;

mysql_select_db('zen_cart_db_name');

Just have to remember to always reselect the zen cart db after doing what I need to do.

Hope this helps someone else trying to do this.

Glen

[DrByte]

If you're going to do raw mysql_xxxxx function calls, then yes, that's how you'll have to do it.

If you use Zen Cart's db abstraction layer, you can create another db connection perhaps called $db1, and use that for queries instead. That way $db and $db1 point to separate connections. See the init_includes/init_database.php for an example of creating a db connection.

[glen58]

A little beyond my skill level, but something I can probably figure out. Thanks for the reply.

[rainthebat]

This looks interesting, I would like to try this out to connect to the forum database to pull new post info onto my front page.