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 (opens in a new tab).

We recommend using the Bolt driver (opens in a new tab) 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 a connection class and specify target host and port, default is localhost.
$conn = new \Bolt\connection\Socket();
// Create a new Bolt instance and provide connection object.
$bolt = new \Bolt\Bolt($conn);
// Set available Bolt versions for Memgraph.
$bolt->setProtocolVersions(4.1, 4, 3);
// Build and get protocol version instance which creates connection and executes handshake.
$protocol = $bolt->build();
// Login to database with credentials.
$protocol->hello(\Bolt\helpers\Auth::basic('username', 'password'));
 
// Pipeline two messages. One to execute query with parameters and second to pull records.
$protocol
    ->run('CREATE (a:Greeting) SET a.message = $message RETURN id(a) AS nodeId, a.message AS message', ['message' => 'Hello, World!'])
    ->pull();
 
// Server responses are waiting to be fetched through iterator.
$rows = iterator_to_array($protocol->getResponses(), false);
// Get content from requested record.
$row = $rows[1]->getContent();
 
echo 'Node ' . $row[0] . ' says: ' . $row[1];

If you need SSL connection you have to replace Socket instance with StreamSocket and enable SSL with additional method.

$conn = new \Bolt\connection\StreamSocket('URI or IP', 7687);
$conn->setSslContextOptions([
    'verify_peer' => true
]);

If you want to connect to Memgraph Cloud you have to set these parameters.

$conn = new \Bolt\connection\StreamSocket('URI or IP', 7687);
$conn->setSslContextOptions([
    'peer_name' => 'Memgraph DB',
    'allow_self_signed' => true
]);

3. Run a composer command to get the required library:

composer require stefanak-michal/memgraph-bolt-wrapper

It will auto create composer.json file.

4. Start the application with the following command:

php -S localhost:4000

Open you browser, enter localhost:4000 as URL and you should see an output similar to the following:

Node 1 says: Hello, World!

Where to next?

Check out the PHP Bolt driver repository (opens in a new tab) to learn more about using the PHP Bolt library.

You can simplify usage of this library with wrapper Memgraph Bolt wrapper (opens in a new tab).