mysqli::mysqli(): (HY000/2002): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket 'MySQL' (2)

Question

I get this error when I try to connect to the mysql database using php mysqli class. Using following code:

$db = new MySQLi("localhost","kamil","*****");
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
    echo "An error occured. Please try again later.";
    exit();
}

password is * for security.

I have created user kamil with all privileges on external ip address and localhost. When I run: select user,host from mysql.user it properly displays those two users.

I did some research and used this benchmark: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2183134/1839439 to see what it connects to. As it turns out it is only able to connect to 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.0.1:3306 which is localhost, however when I supply localhost it throws out this error.

My question is why does it only allow me to connect to DB using localhost ip address and not the name or external ip. Do I need a different host if I want to be able to use mysql on website or if I can use 127.0.0.1?

EDIT:
hosts file

127.0.0.1       localhost
::1             localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0         ip6-localnet
ff00::0         ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1         ip6-allnodes
ff02::2         ip6-allrouters

127.0.1.1       raspberrypi

---

Mysql user table results for this user:

| kamil            | 109.255.177.28 |
| kamil            | localhost      |

Answer 1

When you use just "localhost" the MySQL client library tries to use a Unix domain socket for the connection instead of a TCP/IP connection. The error is telling you that the socket, called MySQL, cannot be used to make the connection, probably because it does not exist (error number 2).

From the MySQL Documentation:

On Unix, MySQL programs treat the host name localhost specially, in a way that is likely different from what you expect compared to other network-based programs. For connections to localhost, MySQL programs attempt to connect to the local server by using a Unix socket file. This occurs even if a --port or -P option is given to specify a port number. To ensure that the client makes a TCP/IP connection to the local server, use --host or -h to specify a host name value of 127.0.0.1, or the IP address or name of the local server. You can also specify the connection protocol explicitly, even for localhost, by using the --protocol=TCP option.

There are a few ways to solve this problem.

1. You can just use TCP/IP instead of the Unix socket. You would do this by using 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost when you connect. The Unix socket might by faster and safer to use, though.
2. You can change the socket in php.ini: open the MySQL configuration file my.cnf to find where MySQL creates the socket, and set PHP's mysqli.default_socket to that path. On my system it's /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock.

3. Configure the socket directly in the PHP script when opening the connection. For example:

   $db = new MySQLi('localhost', 'kamil', '***', '', 0, 
                                 '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock')