What are the best practices for handling database connections in PHP scripts to avoid errors like "MySQL server has gone away"?

The "MySQL server has gone away" error occurs when a PHP script loses connection to the MySQL server due to inactivity or a timeout. To avoid this error, it is recommended to properly handle database connections by reconnecting if necessary before executing queries. 

// Establish a database connection
$connection = mysqli_connect("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Check if the connection is still active, and reconnect if necessary
if (!mysqli_ping($connection)) {
    mysqli_close($connection);
    $connection = mysqli_connect("localhost", "username", "password", "database");
}

// Execute your query using the $connection variable
$result = mysqli_query($connection, "SELECT * FROM table");

// Close the connection when finished
mysqli_close($connection);

Keywords

PHP database connections MySQL server error handling reconnection.

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