How to Connect a MySQL Database to a JavaScript Chart Using PHP

For beginners, visualizing data from an SQL database in a JS chart usually looks quite challenging. JavaScript is a client-side solution and querying an SQL database requires a server-side approach due to security reasons — you just can't store database login and password in your front-end JS code. But things are never as bad as they seem.

Actually, everything is pretty straightforward and there are many workarounds out there involving PHP, Ajax, Node.js, etc. This just-published tutorial explains how to use PHP to load data to a JS chart from a MySQL database, providing clear instructions covering the following steps:

1. Create a PHP script.
2. Declare MySQL database variables.
3. Connect to the database.
4. Query the database.
5. Create data from the query.
6. Encode data to the JSON format.
7. Close the connection.
8. Draw the chart in JS.

Code samples are also available along the tutorial.

See the full tutorial here. Feel free to ask questions there or here if anything remains unclear.