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

Extract it and run:

   1  python setup.py build
   2  sudo python setup.py install

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

   1  In file included from _mysql.c:29:
   2  pymemcompat.h:10:20: error: Python.h: No such file or directory
   3  _mysql.c:30:26: error: structmember.h: No such file or directory
   4  In file included from /usr/include/mysql/mysql.h:44,
   5                   from _mysql.c:40:
   6  .
   7  .
   8  .
   9  _mysql.c:2808: warning: return type defaults to 'int'
  10  _mysql.c: In function 'DL_EXPORT':
  11  _mysql.c:2808: error: expected declaration specifiers before 'init_mysql'
  12  _mysql.c:2886: error: expected '{' at end of input
  13  error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

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

   1  apt-get install python-dev

Installing the library should now work:

   1  python setup.py build
   2  python setup.py install

Next test the library in the python console:

   1  import MySQLdb
   2  
   3  # Note that this example uses UTF-8 encoding
   4  conn = MySQLdb.connect(host='localhost', user='...', passwd='...', db='...', charset = "utf8", use_unicode = True)
   5  cursor = conn.cursor()
   6  
   7  
   8  cursor.execute ("SELECT * FROM cities")
   9  rows = cursor.fetchall ()
  10  
  11  for row in rows:
  12    print "%s, %s" % (row[0], row[1].encode('utf-8'))
  13  
  14  print "Number of rows returned: %d" % cursor.rowcount
  15  

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

   1  cursor.close ()
   2  conn.commit ()
   3  conn.close ()

For more information about MySQLdb see this article.