PHP quick start

At the end of this guide, you will have created a simple PHP Hello, World! program that connects to the Memgraph database and executes simple queries.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you will need:

• A running Memgraph instance. If you need to set up Memgraph, take a look at the Installation guide.
• A basic understanding of graph databases and the property graph model.
• Composer, a tool for dependency management in PHP. Instructions on how to install Composer can be found here.

note

We recommend using the Bolt driver for PHP.

Basic Setup

We'll be using a very simple PHP script in combination with Composer to demonstrate how to connect to a running Memgraph instance.

Let's jump in and connect a simple program to Memgraph.

1. Create a new directory for your application, for example /MyApp and position yourself in it.

2. Create a index.php file and add the following code to it:

<?php

require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';

// Create new Bolt instance
$bolt = new \Bolt\Bolt(new \Bolt\connection\StreamSocket());
// Set Bolt protocol version if needed
$bolt->setProtocolVersions(4.0);
// Connect to database
$bolt->init('MyClient/1.0', '', '');

// Execute query
$res = $bolt->run(
    'CREATE (a:Greeting) SET a.message = $message RETURN id(a) AS nodeId, a.message AS message',
    ['message' => 'Hello, World!']
);
// Pull records from last query
$rows = $bolt->pull();

echo 'Node ' . $rows[0][0] . ' says: ' . $rows[0][1];

3. Create a composer.json file with the following contents:

{
    "name": "memgraph/myapp",
    "description": "This is a simple Hello World app.",
    "require": {
        "php": ">=7.1",
        "stefanak-michal/bolt": "^2.1"
    }
}

4. Execute the next command to install the needed dependencies:

composer install

5. Start the application with the following command:

php -S localhost:4000

You should see an output similar to the following:

Node 1: Hello, World!

Where to next?

For real-world examples of how to use Memgraph, we suggest you take a look at the Tutorials page. You can also browse through the Database functionalities section to get an overview of all the functionalities Memgraph offers.

Getting help

Visit the Getting help page in case you run into any kind of problem or you have additional questions.