MySQL Create Database

Creating a database is usually a one-off step run by an admin — not your app at runtime. Still worth knowing the syntax.

Via PHP

$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost', 'root', '');

try {
    $pdo->exec('CREATE DATABASE shop CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci');
    echo 'created';
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo $e->getMessage();
}

Connect without the dbname parameter — you don't have one yet.

Idempotent — won't error if it exists

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS shop
    CHARACTER SET utf8mb4
    COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

The mysql CLI is the more common path

mysql -u root -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE shop CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON shop.* TO 'shop_app'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '...';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

For real apps — use migrations

Don't ship "create DB" code in your app. Use a migration tool that tracks schema changes:

Charset, collation, and you

• utf8mb4 is the only character set worth picking — handles every Unicode codepoint including emoji.
• utf8mb4_unicode_ci sorts by Unicode rules; utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci (MySQL 8) is even better.

Example

<?php
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost', 'root', '');
$pdo->exec('CREATE DATABASE shop CHARACTER SET utf8mb4');

Exercise

Test yourself