.. _intro:

Introduction

phpMyAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP that is intended to handle the administration of a MySQL or MariaDB database server. You can use phpMyAdmin to perform most administration tasks, including creating a database, running queries, and adding user accounts.

Supported features

Currently phpMyAdmin can:

• create, browse, edit, and drop databases, tables, views, columns, and indexes
• display multiple results sets through stored procedures or queries
• create, copy, drop, rename and alter databases, tables, columns and indexes
• maintenance server, databases and tables, with proposals on server configuration
• execute, edit and bookmark any :term:SQL-statement, even batch-queries
• load text files into tables
• create [#f1]_ and read dumps of tables
• export [#f1]_ data to various formats: :term:CSV, :term:XML, :term:PDF, :term:ISO/:term:IEC 26300 - :term:OpenDocument Text and Spreadsheet, Microsoft Word 2000, and LATEX formats
• import data and :term:MySQL structures from :term:OpenDocument spreadsheets, as well as :term:XML, :term:CSV, and :term:SQL files
• administer multiple servers
• add, edit, and remove MySQL user accounts and privileges
• check referential integrity in MyISAM tables
• create :term:PDF graphics of your database layout
• search globally in a database or a subset of it
• transform stored data into any format using a set of predefined functions, like displaying BLOB-data as image or download-link
• track changes on databases, tables and views
• support InnoDB tables and foreign keys
• support mysqli, the improved MySQL extension see :ref:faq1_17
• create, edit, call, export and drop stored procedures and functions
• create, edit, export and drop events and triggers
• communicate in 80 different languages <https://www.phpmyadmin.net/translations/>_

Shortcut keys

Currently phpMyAdmin supports following shortcuts:

• k and CTRL+k - Toggle console
• CTRL+ALT+c - Toggle console
• h - Go to home page
• s - Open settings
• d + s - Go to database structure (Provided you are in database related page)
• d + f - Search database (Provided you are in database related page)
• t + s - Go to table structure (Provided you are in table related page)
• t + f - Search table (Provided you are in table related page)
• backspace - Takes you to older page.

A word about users

Many people have difficulty understanding the concept of user management with regards to phpMyAdmin. When a user logs in to phpMyAdmin, that username and password are passed directly to MySQL. phpMyAdmin does no account management on its own (other than allowing one to manipulate the MySQL user account information); all users must be valid MySQL users.

.. rubric:: Footnotes

.. [#f1]

phpMyAdmin can compress (:term:`ZIP`, :term:`GZip` or :term:`RFC 1952`
formats) dumps and :term:`CSV` exports if you use PHP with
:term:`Zlib` support (``--with-zlib``).
Proper support may also need changes in :file:`php.ini`.