Development Environments and PHP/MySQL

[system]

I recently installed WAMP to develop my website locally.
I’m new with PHP/MySQL and perhaps don’t entirely understand how connecting to mysql databases works with PHP.

How do most people set up their database locally? I assume that they mirror their production database tables.
If I need to connect to a server each time I do a SQL query (mysql_connect), and the development server is local but the real server is remote, how do I connect differently while testing and still be able to use that code?
Sorry if that’s not a good explanation. It seems that I would have to connect to localhost for testing, and www.example.com for production, which would require different code.

Answers or links to answers would be helpful!

[jcneally]

For anyone who had the same question or just wants to point out mistakes/bad practices, I solved the problem by having a PHP file with a single function to return the servername. The file returns localhost on my local machine and the remote server name on the server code.

(this is the same person as above, I registered an account)

[jSherz]

For anyone who had the same question or just wants to point out mistakes/bad practices, I solved the problem by having a PHP file with a single function to return the servername. The file returns localhost on my local machine and the remote server name on the server code.

(this is the same person as above, I registered an account)

Just to add another solution for reference, you can have a PHP file that connects to the database (that can then be included on other files) then write-protect (remove write permissions) from the file on the server, so that it cannot be replaced.

Each file would then have its own connection information.

[Edwardtoth]

Can anybody provide me some data on php and how to work on it using database?
Bathroom Faucets