PHP and MySQL Function

[section8]

Hello, I am very new to PHP, and am wondering...

 

Is there a good way to have some sort of function to connect to a MySQL database instead of having to punch in all the information everytime?

 

I made a connectdb.php which looks like:

 

function connectdb()
{
	$host = "localhost";
	$user = "?????";
	$pass = "?????";
	$db = "?????";
	$connection = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass) or die ("Unable to connect!");
	mysql_select_db($db) or die ("Unable to select database!");
}

 

And I just include this at the top of any PHP files that need access to the database.

 

With this it seems to work OK, I just call the function set the query and get the result.

 

But I noticed that I can't close the database connection afterwards, it errors out:

Warning: mysql_close(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource....

 

Also when I reboot or power goes out I get e-mailed saying that some databases/tables were left open.

 

 

I can't seem to come up with anything, does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance!

[revraz]

The connection closes after the script is finished running.