A.13 MySQL 8.0 FAQ: C API, libmysql

libmysql is a C-based API that you can use in C applications to connect with the MySQL database server. It is also itself used as the foundation for drivers for standard database APIs like ODBC, Perl's DBI, and Python's DB API.

For MySQL 8.0, 5.7, 5.6, and 5.5, we recommend libmysql 8.0.

For C-language and X DevApi Document Store for MySQL 8.0, we recommend MySQL Connector/C++. Connector/C++ 8.0 has compatible C headers. (This is not applicable to MySQL 5.7 or before.)

See Section 28.7, “MySQL C API”.

Please report any bugs or inconsistencies you observe to our Bugs Database. Select the C API Client as shown.

Yes, you can download the libmysqlclient source code and compile it on your own. Here's an example:

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mysql/mysql-server 
$ cd mysql-server 
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -GNinja -DDOWNLOAD_BOOST=1 \
           -DWITH_BOOST=/tmp -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DWITHOUT_SERVER=ON \
           -DWITH_SSL=system 
$ ninja libmysqlclient.a 
$ ls -la archive_output_directory/libmysqlclient.a 
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kg kg 8,5M wrz 5 04:57 archive_output_directory/libmysqlclient.a