What are the key components involved in the interaction between PHP, MySQL, and Apache in a forum server?

To interact between PHP, MySQL, and Apache in a forum server, you need to establish a connection to the MySQL database using PHP, query the database to retrieve or store forum data, and then display the data on the forum website using Apache to serve the PHP files.

// Establish a connection to the MySQL database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "forum_db";

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

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

// Query the database to retrieve or store forum data
$sql = "SELECT * FROM posts";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    // output data of each row
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "id: " . $row["id"]. " - Title: " . $row["title"]. " - Content: " . $row["content"]. "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

$conn->close();