MySQL Cookbook

Writing Applications That Adapt to the MySQL Server Version

Problem

You want to use a given feature that is only available as of a particular version of MySQL.

Solution

Ask the server for its version number. If the server is too old, maybe you can fall back to a workaround for the missing feature, if one exists.

Discussion

If you’re writing an application that can perform certain functions only if the MySQL server supports the necessary underlying operations, the server version number allows you to determine whether those operations are available (or whether you need to perform some sort of workaround, assuming there is one).

To get the server version, issue a SELECT VERSION( ) statement. The result is a string that looks something like 3.23.27-gamma. In other words, it returns a string consisting of major, minor, and “teeny” version numbers, and possibly some suffix. The version string can be used as is for presentation purposes if you want to produce a status display for the user. However, for comparisons, it’s simpler to work with a number—in particular, a 5-digit number in Mmmtt format, where M, mm, tt are the major, minor, and teeny version numbers. The conversion can be performed by splitting the string at the periods, stripping off from the third piece the suffix that begins with the first non-numeric character, and then joining the pieces.^[40]

Here’s a DBI function that takes a database handle argument and returns a two-element list containing both the string and numeric forms ...