Referência:O que é um exemplo de código perfeito usando a extensão MySQL?

<?php

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
// display_errors can be changed to 0 in production mode to
// suppress PHP's error messages

/*
Can be used for testing
$_POST['id'] = 1;
$_POST['name'] = 'Markus';
*/

$config = array(
    'host' => '127.0.0.1', 
    'user' => 'my_user', 
    'pass' => 'my_pass', 
    'db' => 'my_database'
);

# Connect and disable mysql error output
$connection = @mysql_connect($config['host'], 
    $config['user'], $config['pass']);

if (!$connection) {
    trigger_error('Unable to connect to database: ' 
        . mysql_error(), E_USER_ERROR);
}

if (!mysql_select_db($config['db'])) {
    trigger_error('Unable to select db: ' . mysql_error(), 
        E_USER_ERROR);
}

if (!mysql_set_charset('utf8')) {
    trigger_error('Unable to set charset for db connection: ' 
        . mysql_error(), E_USER_ERROR);
}

$result = mysql_query(
    'UPDATE tablename SET name = "' 
    . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['name']) 
    . '" WHERE id = "' 
    . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['id']) . '"'
);

if ($result) {
    echo htmlentities($_POST['name'], ENT_COMPAT, 'utf-8') 
        . ' updated.';
} else {
    trigger_error('Unable to update db: ' 
        . mysql_error(), E_USER_ERROR);
}