PHP not connecting to MYSQL via local socket - php

Question

I have just installed mysql onto my macbook pro, mysql seems to be working, however i cannot connect to mysql from php via mysqli. I keep getting errors. I have read many different articles and web pages, all of which seem complicated and not solving my issue.
I have added /tmp/mysock to the php.ini file:
pdo_mysql.default_socket= /tmp/mysql.sock
mysqli.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
I have installed apache, php, mysql all separately and not using software such as MAMP, XAMP, phpmyadmin or MYSQLworkbench
This is my PHP code that is trying to connect to the database, and following the code is the error that is displayed at the browser.
<?php
$title = $_POST['blog_title'];
$body = $_POST['blog_entry'];
$link = mysqli_connect('localhost','root','password','blog');
if (!$link) {
echo "Error: Unable to connect to MySQL." . PHP_EOL;
echo "Debugging errno: " . mysqli_connect_errno() . PHP_EOL;
echo "Debugging error: " . mysqli_connect_error() . PHP_EOL;
exit;
}
mysqli_select_db($link,"blog") or die("Unable to select database");
$query = "INSERT INTO entires(title,body) VALUES ($title,$body);";
mysqli_query($query);
mysqli_close($link);
header('Location: ViewBlog.php');
exit();
?>
This is the error i get:
Error: Unable to connect to MySQL. Debugging errno: 2054 Debugging error: The server requested authentication method unknown to the client
Ive been trying to figure this out for so long, any help would be much appreciated, thanks.
The database i'm trying to access, i have already created in mysql ("blog");

Answer 1

Try checking the user auth type in MySQL.
I just ran into the same error while setting up wp on Win 10, PHP 7.3 and MySQL 8.0.13.
This was the full error message I was getting:
Warning: mysqli_connect(): The server requested authentication method
unknown to the client [caching_sha2_password] in
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\dbtest.php on line 2
Warning: mysqli_connect(): (HY000/2054): The server requested
authentication method unknown to the client in
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\dbtest.php on line 2 Error: Unable to connect to
MySQL. Debugging errno: 2054 Debugging error: The server requested
authentication method unknown to the client
To resolve the issue I had to set the MySQL user to use the standard authentication type.
Here is the SQL Script I ran to fix the issue:
ALTER USER 'user'#'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'pass';