How to connect to MySQL database using PHP

How to connect to MySQL database using PHP
<?php

$username = "root"; //your_name
$password = ""; //your_password
$hostname = "localhost";  //Hostname

//connection to the database
$dbhandle = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password)
 or die("Unable to connect to MySQL");
echo "Connected to MySQL<br>";

//select a database to work with
$selected = mysql_select_db("mydatabase",$dbhandle)
  or die("Could not select mydatabase");

//execute the SQL query and return records
$result = mysql_query("SELECT *  FROM contacts");

//fetch tha data from the database
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
   echo "ID:".$row{'contact_id'}." Name:".$row{'contact_first'}."contact_last: ". //display the results
   $row{'contact_last'}."<br>";
}
//close the connection
mysql_close($dbhandle);
?>


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