Day 13. Using the C API

C is a powerful language and the choice of many people who write applications that interact with a database such as MySQL. Much of MySQL and its client programs has been written in C, and the API is included with the MySQL distribution. A knowledge of the C API is essential for those writing applications in C, and C itself is a language you should consider if you are creating high-performance or standalone database applications.

Today you will learn:

• When to use C to write MySQL applications, and the key principles of the C API

• The datatypes provided by the mysqlclient library

• How to connect to a MySQL database, run queries, and process the results

• How to determine whether errors occurred during database interaction, and how to handle them

This lesson assumes that you already have a knowledge of C programming and is not a tutorial on the language itself. It is intended to teach you how to use the API so that you can easily start building powerful MySQL applications.