Bridging the Gap: Talking to MySQL From

VB.NET Through PHP and XML

(Page 1 of 4 )

This month's Developer Shed Writing Contest Winner, Nicholas Clayton, explains how he was
able to use VB.NET, PHP, and XML to talk to a troublesome MySQL database. "There may be
times when what your client needs and what their web host will give you brings your project to a
grinding halt. I have encountered such a problem recently when trying to access a client’s
hosted MySQL Database from an app I have written in VB.NET."
No matter what I did, the server would not let me in. I had tried connecting from my web site
first, but that was a no go. So I decided to break out a VB.NET app to see if that would do the
trick. Well, it does, but not the way I was hoping for. I have finally finished a workaround for
this security nightmare that I have had for the past couple of weeks.
I had tried talking to the hosting company but kept getting very general, very basic answers that
really did not have anything to do with what I was trying to accomplish. So after banging my
head on the desk and scouring Google like a madman, I decided to take matters into my own
hands and learn a few new tricks while I was at it.
First, I will explain the big picture and then break it down into the individual pieces.
The Big Picture
I’ve created a small front-end in VB.NET to display a DataGrid showing messages saved in the
client’s MySQL database. I cannot connect through MyODBC thanks to the wonderfully secure
hosting environment, so I came up with another way…XML generated by PHP. Don’t ask me
how I came up with this, it was a late night enlightenment.
In order to limit who or what could access this information, I created a key value to pass along
with the rest of my post data. Once this data has been posted, I get back a string of XML with the
data I need for the DataGrid. This is similar to the actions that occur when communicating with a
Web Service.
Simple enough, right?
First, I’ll start with the front-end.

Bridging the Gap: Talking to MySQL From

VB.NET Through PHP and XML - An
Adventure in VB.NET
(Page 2 of 4 )
All it takes is a Form with a DataGrid placed on it, along with a couple of buttons to read new
and old messages. Name the form frmMsg.vb and then name the three buttons btnNew, btnRead,
btnClose and the DataGrid dgMsg

You will also need to create a new class named WebBridge.vb. Since it is the most important
piece of the front-end, we will start here. Refer to the comments within the code for
explanations.

'Import these namespaces to make our programming life a

'little easier
Imports System
Imports System.Net
Imports System.Text
Imports System.IO

Public Class WebBridge

Private _acc As String = "12345"
'Our test key
Private _url As String
'Target URL
Private _pdata As Object
'Post Data
Private _rsp As String
'Response from php page

Public ReadOnly Property Account()

As String 'Key to access page
Get 'ReadOnly ensures the value
Return _acc 'cannot be changed
End Get
End Property

Public Property URL() As String

'Target URL
Get
Return _url
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As String)
_url = Value
 End Set
End Property

Public Property PostData() As Object

'Posting Data
Get
'Add Account value to post data
Return "acc=" & Account & "&" & _pdata
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As Object)
_pdata = Value
End Set
End Property

Public ReadOnly Property

XMLResponse() As String
'php page Response
Get
'Again ReadOnly so
Return _rsp
'it cannot be changed
End Get
'by outside influence.
End Property

Public Sub Connect()

'Primary procedure

'Create a new WebRequest object

'with the specified URL
Dim rq As WebRequest =
WebRequest.Create(URL)
'Set Method and Header information
With rq
.Method = "POST"
.ContentType =
"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
End With

'Send the data to the php page

SendData(rq, PostData)

'Assign the response from the

'php page to the variable for XMLResponse
_rsp = GetXMLResponse(rq)
End Sub
Private Sub SendData(ByRef req As WebRequest,
ByVal data As String)

'Store the post data as a byte array

'for passing to the page
Dim b As Byte() =
Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(data)

'Alert the request of the length of

'the post contents
Req.ContentLength = b.Length
 'Create a Stream to send the
'RequestStream to the php page
Dim sr As Stream = req.GetRequestStream()

'Send the data

sr.Write(b, 0, b.length)

'Close the stream

sr.Close()
End Sub
Private Function GetXMLResponse(ByRef
req As WebRequest) As String

'Create a WebResponse object to get

'response from php page
Dim rs As WebResponse = req.GetResponse()

'Create a stream to capture the response

Dim sr As Stream = rs.GetResponseStream()

'Create a StreamReader to convert

'the stream to text
Dim xr As StreamReader = New StreamReader(sr)

'Return the response as text

Return xr.ReadToEnd()
End Function
End Class

This will handle all of the communication with the target php page as you will see shortly. There
are only a few procedures needed for frmMsg. These will establish a connection to a target php
page through a WebBridge object and will then display the appropriate information in our
DataGrid. Our DataGrid’s table will be structured like our XML output from the target php page.
You will see the connection later in the PHP section of the tutorial.

Private Sub ShowMessages

(ByVal
View As Byte)
'Create a new WebBridge Object
Dim wbg As New WebBridge
'Set up the WebBridge object’s
'values and call Connect()
With wbg
.URL=http://www.xyz.com/getmessagelist.php
.PostData = "view=" & View
.Connect()
'Display the XML data in dgMsg
CreateMessageList(.XMLResponse)
End With
End Sub
Private Sub CreateMessageList(ByVal
XMLString As String)
'Create a data set to hold the
'XML data
 Dim ds As New DataSet
'Create a StringReader to store the
'XML data
Dim sr As New StringReader(XMLString)
'Create a new table in our dataset
'called "Message". You will see why soon.
ds.Tables.Add("Message")
'Add columns to the table. Again, the
'names will be explained soon.
With ds.Tables(0).Columns
.Add("MsgID")
.Add("From")
.Add("Email")
.Add("MsgDate")
.Add("MsgTime")
End With
'Read in the XMLString to populate the table
Ds.ReadXml(sr, XmlReadMode.IgnoreSchema)
'Display the Data in the DataGrid
dgMsg.SetDataBinding(ds,"Message")
End Sub
Private Sub btnNew_Click(ByVal sender
As System.Object, _ ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles btnNew.Click
'Show New Messages
ShowMessages(0)
End Sub
Private Sub btnRead_Click(ByVal sender
As System.Object, _ ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles btnRead.Click
'Show Read Messages
ShowMessages(1)
End Sub

Bridging the Gap: Talking to MySQL From

VB.NET Through PHP and XML - PHP:
Talking the Universal Language
(Page 3 of 4 )

Now that this is out of the way, we can create our php page to generate the XML. We will
assume that data has been entered into the database through a different php page, so all we are
concerned about is pulling the data that already exists. The steps we need to follow to generate
the XML file are:
1) Check for an Access Key.
2) Validate the Access Key. In our case, we are checking for a value of "12345".
3) Start the XML document.
4) Connect to MySQL and select the proper database.
5) Query the table for the desired information.
6) Loop through the recordset and create XML containing the retrieved data.
7) Close the database connection
8) Close the XML document.

<?
//getmessagelist.php

// Make sure that there is an

//Access Key in the post data
If($_POST['acc'] != '')
{
If($_POST['acc'] == "12345")
// Check for the correct Key
$auth = 1;
// Key is correct, this is a
//valid request
Else
$auth = 0;
//Invalid request
}
Else
$auth = 0;
//Invalid request

//If the request is valid,

//produce an XML string
//containing the requested information
If($auth == 1) {

// Start the xml document

echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"
n";
echo "<Messages>n";

//Connect to the database and select the table

$db = mysql_connect("host","username","password");
mysql_select_db("database");

//Query the table for details about the message

$res = mysql_query("SELECT `fname`, `lname`, `email`, `date_submitted`, `time_submitted`,`
MsgID` FROM `tblMessages` WHERE `Status` = ".$_POST['view']." ORDER BY `date_submit
ted`, `time_submitted`");

//If information exists, write it out as XML

If($rs = mysql_fetch_row($res)) {
do {
echo "<Message>n";
 //This is the table name
echo "<MsgID>".$rs[5]."</MsgID>n";
//Field 1
echo "<From>".$rs[0]." ".$rs[1]."</From>n";
//Field 2
echo "<Email>".$rs[2]."</Email>n";
//Field 3
echo "<MsgDate>".$rs[3]."</MsgDate>n";
//Field 4
echo "</MsgTime>".$rs[4]."</MsgTime>n";
//Field 5
echo "</Message>n";
} while($rs = mysql_fetch_row($res));
mysql_close();
}

Echo "</Messages>";
}
?>

Bridging the Gap: Talking to MySQL From

VB.NET Through PHP and XML - What's
Said and Done in the End
(Page 4 of 4 )

Here is what our WebBridge object will see as a response:

<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8”

<Messages>
<Message>
<MsgID>1</MsgID>
<From>Test Dummy</From>
<Email>testdummy@td.com</Email>
<MsgDate>1/14/2004</MsgDate>
<MsgTime>1073437277</MsgTime>
</Message>
</Messages>
A clean and valid xml string containing all of your requested data that can be used to easily fill a
DataSet within VB.NET. Sweet and (kind of) simple. Now run your project, click on either the
“Read New” button or “Read Old” button to view the data from the database.
Your datagrid will show you something like this:

Now you can pat yourself on the back for peacefully bringing together 3 distinct technologies
into one harmonic package.
Conclusion
If you need more information about any of the discussed technologies (VB.NET, PHP, MySQL,
XML) be sure to visit these resources out on the web:
VB.NET - http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic
PHP - http://www.php.net
MySQL - http://www.mysql.com
XML - http://www.xml.com
So, if you are ever caught with an overly secure MySQL server environment and need to pull
some data remotely, you can do it will a little bit of .NET magic.
This is meant as an example, and not as a full blown, secure method for database
communications. This is also a good way to become familiar with some VB.NET techniques and
to play around with various other technologies in a single project. I know I have learned quite a
bit from trudging through this exercise myself and hopefully this will help others out there
looking to do the same, while also catching the attention of Developer Shed, who will may
just deem this worthy of display. [And in fact, we have! -Editor]