PHP Does not show errors when trying to connect to a wrong database using PDO

Question

I'm pretty much new to PHP and I'm having a very basic problem which I haven't found a solution to despite looking through similar questions in the forum.

I'm trying to connect PHP with my database (MySQL) through PDO. If I enter a wrong username or password php does show an error in the browser but if I enter a wrong database name it doesn't retireve any errors. How is this possible? My code is as follows:

<?php
try{
    $conn = new PDO('mysql:127.0.0.1;dbname=myDb','root','root');
    $conn -> setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
} catch(PDOexception $e){
    echo 'wrong credentials';
}

My php.ini file is configured to show errors and Apache was restarted after modifying it with the following values:

error_reporting  =  E_ALL | E_STRICT
display_errors = On
display_startup_errors = On
log_errors = On

I also tried to use the following code at the begining of my script but it still doesn't show errors related to a wrong database name

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(~0);

Thanks a lot in advance for your help, I'm sure is probably a pretty stupid thing but I honestly can't figure it out.

Answer 1

This turned into quite a tricky bug to find and explain even though it is quite simple.

The issue is that the dsn string is incorrect.

current value: 'mysql:127.0.0.1;dbname=myDb'

it should be: 'mysql:host=127.0.0.1;dbname=myDB' note: host= was missing.

However, PDO does not validate the dsn parameter string correctly and connects to the Localhost database without any error.

However, it has ignored the dbname parameter, so that when you try a query then you get an error of: 1046 No database selected'.

Clarification of what is happening (see Alfredo Delgado below): PDO is ignoring the malformed parameter completely and assuming the Localhost database is what you want. ;-/

As mentioned by Alfredo Delgado:

... "the resulting behavior of not having host= in the dsn was that PDO was silently defaulting to localhost. Since I happened to have a local copy of the DB I wasted hours chasing down red herrings like permissions."