In what situations would it be more beneficial to use a database instead of text-based files for storing and retrieving data in PHP scripts, and how can this transition be made smoothly?

Using a database instead of text-based files is more beneficial when dealing with large amounts of structured data that needs to be accessed, updated, and queried efficiently. To make this transition smoothly, you can create a database schema that mirrors the structure of your text-based files, import the data into the database, and then modify your PHP scripts to interact with the database using SQL queries. 

// Connect to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Query the database
$sql = "SELECT * FROM myTable";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    // Output data of each row
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "id: " . $row["id"]. " - Name: " . $row["name"]. "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

$conn->close();

Keywords

database text-based files data storage PHP scripts transition

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