Connecting to a MySQL database from Python

Before we can connect to a MySQL database, we have to connect to the MySQL server.

In order to do this, we need to know the IP address of the MySQL server as well as the port it is listening on.

We also have to be a registered user with a password in order to get authenticated by the MySQL server.

Getting ready

You will need to have access to a running MySQL server instance and you also need to have administrator privileges in order to create databases and tables.

There is a free MySQL Community Edition available from the official MySQL website. You can download and install it on your local PC from: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

Note

In this chapter, we are using MySQL Community Server (GPL) Release: 5.6.26.

How to do it…

In order to connect to MySQL, we first need to install a special Python connector driver. This driver will enable us to talk to the MySQL server from Python.

The driver is freely available on the MySQL website and comes with a very nice...