code-diesel

Before you go ahead and think that you don’t need yet another MySQL management tool, I think you should at least take a quick look at this one. Adminer is a single file (yes! everything in a single php file) tool to manage all your MySQL related tasks. All you have to do is upload the adminer.php file to your server and voila! you are ready to go. No messing around with huge software’s to manage your database. Weighing only 170KB, its easy to upload to any server. A demo of the same is included on the Adminer site.

Of course other tools such as phpMyadmin, MySQL Workbench, SQLyog MySQL GUI have their advantages with the various advanced features they provide, but if you need a quick way to manage your database with all of the standard tasks, then Adminer will surely suit your purpose.

Let us take a quick look at some features Adminer provides:

# Connect to a database server with username and password
# Select an existing database or create a new one
# List fields, indexes, foreign keys and triggers of table
# Change name, engine, collation, auto_increment and comment of table
# Alter name, type, collation, comment and default values of columns
# Add and drop tables and columns
# Create, alter, drop and search by indexes including fulltext
# Create, alter, drop and link lists by foreign keys
# Create, alter, drop and select from views
# Create, alter, drop and call stored procedures and functions
# Create, alter and drop triggers
# List data in tables with search, aggregate, sort and limit results
# Insert new records, update and delete the existing ones
# Supports all data types, blobs through file transfer
# Execute any SQL command from a text field or a file
# Export table structure, data, views, routines, databases to SQL or CSV
# Print database schema connected by foreign keys
# Show processes and kill them
# Display users and rights and change them
# Display variables with links to documentation
# Manage events and table partitions (MySQL 5.1)

I don’t know about you but all this features will get me through the day.

Compiled files

But the most interesting idea I liked about Adminer is that if you download the source zip you will see that the software is actually composed of different files (which also are executable). The root folder contains a compile.php script that when executed combines all the required files in a single adminer.php file. During compilation all the php files are compressed (by removing the spaces), the images are base64 encoded and the javascript minified. In the true sense of the word the files are really not compiled but rather compressed and squeezed together in a single file.

Skining

You can also add your own skins to the application by creating a adminer.css file and putting it in the directory where adminer.php is located.

Extensions

Adminer also allows to to override some default functionality by writing your own custom code. Although I’ve not played much with this feature yet.

In conclusion

A fine product, which I find immensely helpful when I need to quickly perform some database task on a clients server.