How to Build a Simple Video Player with PHP and MySQL

Video players are common on modern websites; this guide shows how to develop a simple yet practical video player using PHP.

1. Design the database – Create a MySQL database named videos with a table also called videos. The table should contain the fields id (auto‑increment primary key), title, url, and thumbnail. Insert some sample rows for demonstration.

2. Create the video player page – Add a file video_player.php. In this file connect to the database, query all records from the videos table, and loop through the result set to output the HTML for each video, including its title, thumbnail image, and a <video> element with controls.

<?php<br/>// Connect to database<br/>$conn = mysqli_connect("localhost", "root", "password", "videos");<br/><br/>// Query video information<br/>$query = "SELECT * FROM videos";<br/>$result = mysqli_query($conn, $query);<br/><br/>// Loop and output video player<br/>while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {<br/>    $title = $row['title'];<br/>    $url = $row['url'];<br/>    $thumbnail = $row['thumbnail'];<br/>    echo '<br/>    <div class="video-container"><br/>        <h2>' . $title . '</h2><br/>        <img src="' . $thumbnail . '"><br/>        <video src="' . $url . '" controls></video><br/>    </div><br/>';<br/>}<br/><br/>// Close connection<br/>mysqli_close($conn);<br/>?>

3. Beautify the player – Create a stylesheet style.css with CSS rules that set the container width, margins, and make the title, image, and video fill the container.

.video-container {<br/>    width: 500px;<br/>    margin-bottom: 20px;<br/>}<br/><br/>.video-container h2 {<br/>    margin-top: 0;<br/>}<br/><br/>.video-container img {<br/>    width: 100%;<br/>}<br/><br/>.video-container video {<br/>    width: 100%;<br/>}

Finally, link the stylesheet in video_player.php with <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> so the player adopts the defined styles.