Using MySQL Database with Visual Basic .

NET 2010
Target: Target of this tutorial is to establish connection to MySQL server Database from Visual Basic .NET 2010. Assumption: I am assuming that you are familiar with the following 1. Creating Database, Table in MySQL 2. Adding data to MySQL database. 3. Creating projects, saving projects, writing codes in VB.net. Prerequisites: To achieve the target, you will have to have the following things, 1. The MySQL Server Download Directly From Here Click Here to Choose Your Download 2. The MySQL .NET Connector Download Directly From Here Click Here to Choose Your Download 3. An IDE for DB Management. Such as SQLyog, PHPmyadmin etc. If you dont have any, then you can download a free tool. Click Here to Download MySQL Query Browser 4. Finally, Visual Basic .NET 2010 [ 2008 will also work ] Once you have the above things, install all of them.

The Database: For the sake of simplicity, create a database with your IDE or whatever the way you like as my_test_projects and a table in it with the name testing_mysql_vb with the following structure. Field Name id user_name Data Type int text Primary yes no Auto_increment Yes no

Ok, now open VB.net and create a new project and name it whatever you like and save it. Now do as the following. Go to menu : Project > Add Reference

This action will open a new dialog box as follows

Here, select the Browse tab and locate the following location
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Connector Net 6.5.4\Assemblies\v2.0

Note: C:\Program Files\ may change as per where you have installed MySQL Connector. Ok, now select MySQL.Data.dll as shown in the above screenshot and click Ok. This action will add MySQL Dot Net Connector with our project. The Form: Design the form as follow,

The above form contains the following controls and settings. Control Label Textbox Button Listbox Name Label1 text_user_name btn_save list_users Value Description User Name This is the label for the input field of User Name This will be used to have the user name to be stored Save This button will save the inputted user name in DB This will list the saved user names when pulled out from DB Get Data This button will pull out the user names from DB and will show then in the list_users list.

Button

btn_get

Now Double-Click on the form to bring the code editor. Above everything, write this
Imports MySql.Data.MySqlClient

This will allow us to use various types, methods and classes of the Connector. Now, just below Public Class your_class_name write the followings
Public Public Public Public dbconn sql As dbcomm dbread As New MySqlConnection String As MySqlCommand As MySqlDataReader

Here we are declaring 4 public objects that we will use. dbconn is the connection to the database. sql is a string, which will actually hold our query. dbcomm is the MySqlCommand that will execute the query. dbread is the one which will hold those data that we will fetch using query from DB. Ok, Now we are going to make the connection. We will open the connection to the DB in the load of our form which now named as form1 by default. The code looks like the following
dbconn = New MySqlConnection("Data Source=localhost;user id=root;database=my_test_projects;") Try dbconn.Open() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox("Error in connection, please check Database and connection server.") End Try

Here, look at the connection string which as follows

Here, Data Source means where the database is stored. We have our database in our local machine, thus I have used localhost, if you have your DB at some other computer connected by LAN to your machine, you will put the IP address of that machine instead of localhost. user id is your ID, you better know what you have used while installing the MySQL Server.

database is the name of the database on which we will be working on. Note: If you have also set a password for your DB Server then you will have put that in your connection string. Then the connection string will look like this
dbconn = New MySqlConnection("Data Source=localhost ; user id=root ; password=your_password_here ; database=my_test_projects;")

After that, in a Try..Catch block, we have opened the connection as

This will open up the connection, if failed, then the message of the catch block will be showed.
MsgBox("Error in connection, please check Database and connection server.")

Run your program to see if you get the Error Message, if dont then lets go ahead. Double click the btn_save button to write the following codes in its click event.
sql = "INSERT INTO testing_mysql_vb(id,user_name) VALUES(NULL,'" & text_user_name.Text & "')" Try dbcomm = New MySqlCommand(sql, dbconn) dbread = dbcomm.ExecuteReader() dbread.Close() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox("Error in saving to Database. Error is :" & ex.Message) dbread.Close() Exit Sub End Try MsgBox("The User Name was saved.") text_user_name.Text = ""

First of all we are writing our SQL Query String as

This query will insert a NULL value for the id and the TEXT of the text field text_user_name as the value for the user_name field in the table testing_mysql_vb. Well, not now, this is just a string. First we have assigned this sql and our opened connection as a MySQL Command with the following line
dbcomm = New MySqlCommand(sql, dbconn)

Then we have executed the command by

The dbread has nothing to do here as we are inserting data, not fetching. However we will still have to close this by
dbread.Close()

We have kept these lines again in a TryCatch block, where in the Catch block we showed a message regarding that the data insertion failed and closed the dbread and also got out of he sub with End Sub. After the TryCatch block we have plotted another message regarding that the data has been successfully inserted and we have also cleared the text of the text_user_name textbox. So, now you can run your program and try putting something in the text_user_name textbox and then clicking on Save to see which message appears. If the msgBox("Error in saving to Database. Error is :" & ex.Message) appears, this means the data wasnt saved, Else if the MsgBox("The User Name was saved.") appears, this means the data has been saved successfully. To get the saved names back from the DB, double click the btn_get button and write the following codes in it
list_users .Items .Clear sql = "SELECT * FROM testing_mysql_vb" Try

dbcomm = New MySqlCommand(sql, dbconn) dbread = dbcomm.ExecuteReader() While dbread.Read list_users.Items.Add(dbread("user_name")) End While dbread.Close() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox("Error in collecting data from Database. Error is :" & ex.Message) dbread.Close() Exit Sub End Try

First of all we are clearing the list_us to list the names that will be pulled out from the DB
list_users .Items .Clear

Then we have written the SQL Query string to pull out everything from the testing_mysql_db table. Then we started a TryCatch block to start processing the query.
dbcomm = New MySqlCommand(sql, dbconn) dbread = dbcomm.ExecuteReader()

Description of the above two lines are same as it was in the btn_save event. But after that, we have started a while loop as
While dbread.Read list_users.Items.Add(dbread("user_name")) End While

Here we made an infinite loop which will run until our reader dbread has data. In each loop we add one user name from dbread to our list list_users. After that, we have closed the dbread in the Catch block of this TryCatch block we have showed a message regarding the data reading processs failure though we dont think that this will come up if you have done what you have been instructed to.

So now, run your program again and click the Get Data button and the list on its left will be filled up with the names you have inserted earlier. And thats it. The Full code is as follows,
Imports MySql.Data.MySqlClient Public Class Form1 Public Public Public Public dbconn sql As dbcomm dbread As New MySqlConnection String As MySqlCommand As MySqlDataReader

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load dbconn = New MySqlConnection("Data Source=localhost;user id=root;database=my_test_projects;") Try dbconn.Open() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox("Error in connection, please check Database and connection server.") End Try End Sub Private Sub btn_save_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventA rgs) Handles btn_save.Click sql = "INSERT INTO testing_mysql_vb(id,user_name) VALUES(NULL,'" & text_user_name.Text & "')" Try dbcomm = New MySqlCommand(sql, dbconn) dbread = dbcomm.ExecuteReader() dbread.Close() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox("Error in saving to Database. Error is :" & ex.Message) dbread.Close() Exit Sub End Try MsgBox("The User Name was saved.") text_user_name.Text = "" End Sub Private Sub btn_get_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventAr gs) Handles btn_get.Click list_users .Items .Clear sql = "SELECT * FROM testing_mysql_vb" Try dbcomm = New MySqlCommand(sql, dbconn) dbread = dbcomm.ExecuteReader()

While dbread.Read list_users.Items.Add(dbread("user_name")) End While dbread.Close() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox("Error in collecting data from Database. Error is :" & ex.Message) dbread.Close() Exit Sub End Try End Sub End Class