MySQLdb: Python.h: No such file or directory

First download mysql-python from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python.

Extract it and run:

 

python setup.py build 

sudo python setup.py install

 

If you get this error you need to install python-dev package:

 

In file included from _mysql.c:29: pymemcompat.h:10:20: error: Python.h: No suchfile or directory _mysql.c:30:26: error: structmember.h: No such file or directory In file included from /usr/include/mysql/mysql.h:44, from _mysql.c:40: . . . _mysql.c:2808: warning: return type defaults to 'int' _mysql.c: In function'DL_EXPORT': _mysql.c:2808: error: expected declaration specifiers before'init_mysql' _mysql.c:2886: error: expected '{' at end of input error: command 'gcc'failed with exit status 1

 

Installing the python-dev package on Debian is done with apt-get or synaptic:

 

apt-get install python-dev

 

Installing the library should now work:

 

python setup.py build python setup.py install

 

Next test the library in the python console:

 

import MySQLdb # Note that this example uses UTF-8 encoding conn =MySQLdb.connect(host='localhost', user='...', passwd='...', db='...', charset ="utf8", use_unicode = True) cursor = conn.cursor() cursor.execute ("SELECT * FROM cities") rows = cursor.fetchall () for row in rows: print "%s, %s" % (row[0], row[1].encode('utf-8')) print "Number of rows returned: %d" % cursor.rowcount

 

Don’t forget to close the cursor and connection, and if you’re inserting data commit before closing, because autocommit is disabled by default:

cursor.close () conn.commit () conn.close ()

 

For more information about MySQLdb see this article.