[android] How to connect Android app to MySQL database?

I have a website already setup which uses mysql database. I want to know how can i connect my app to that database.

What i wanna achieve is that my app should make a request to find a table of a defined "ID" or name. The table contains links to images or image names. I want the app to retrieve those images and display them on the android app.

What are the ways this can be done? Can I use PHP to develop an android app?

The one way is by using webservice, simply write a webservice method in PHP or any other language . And From your android app by using http client request and response , you can hit the web service method which will return whatever you want.

For PHP You can create a webservice like this. Assuming below we have a php file in the server. And the route of the file is yourdomain.com/api.php

if(isset($_GET['api_call'])){
    switch($_GET['api_call']){
       case 'userlogin':
           //perform your userlogin task here
       break; 
    }
}

Now you can use Volley or Retrofit to send a network request to the above PHP Script and then, actually the php script will handle the database operation.

In this case the PHP script is called a RESTful API.

You can learn all the operation at MySQL from this tutorial. Android MySQL Tutorial to Perform CRUD.

Can i use pHp to develop an android app?
Yes . for web development you can use Phonegap. "PHP , HTML"etc.
What are the ways this can be done:?
you can check couple of examples on the internet here is one of them "an easy way" Connect Android To MySQL

Android does not support MySQL out of the box. The "normal" way to access your database would be to put a Restful server in front of it and use the HTTPS protocol to connect to the Restful front end.

Have a look at ContentProvider. It is normally used to access a local database (SQLite) but it can be used to get data from any data store.

I do recommend that you look at having a local copy of all/some of your websites data locally, that way your app will still work when the Android device hasn't got a connection. If you go down this route then a service can be used to keep the two databases in sync.

Use android vollley, it is very fast and you can betterm manipulate requests. Send post request using Volley and receive in PHP

Basically, you will create a map with key-value params for the php request(POST/GET), the php will do the desired processing and you will return the data as JSON(json_encode()). Then you can either parse the JSON as needed or use GSON from Google to let it do the parsing.

Yes you can connect your android app to your PHP to grab results from your database. Use a webservice to connect to your backend script via ASYNC task and http post requests. Check this link for more information Connecting to MySQL