node.js mysql error: ECONNREFUSED - mysql

Question

Why can't I connect to the mysql server?
On the same server an Apache/PHP server is running and it connects without problems!?
var mysql_link = {
host : 'localhost',
port : 3308,
database: 'nodetest',
user : 'root',
password : 'xxx'
};
var connection = mysql.createConnection(mysql_link);
connection.connect(function(err){
console.log(err);
if(err != null){
response.write('Error connecting to mysql:' + err+'\n');
}
});
connection.end();
error
{ [Error: connect ECONNREFUSED]
code: 'ECONNREFUSED',
errno: 'ECONNREFUSED',
syscall: 'connect',
fatal: true }
update
root#dyntest-amd-6000-8gb /var/www/node/dyntest # ps ax | grep mysqld
7928 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep mysqld
28942 ? S 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
29800 ? Sl 17:31 /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld --basedir=/usr/local/mysql --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --plugin-dir=/usr/local/mysql/lib/plugin --user=mysql --log-error=/var/lib/mysql/mysql-error.log --open-files-limit=65535 --pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock --port=3306

Answer 1

I know this question has been answered, but for me the problem was that the mysql server listens on a Unix socket not on a tcp socket. So the solution was to add:
port: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'
to the connection options.

Answer 2

If this has worked before, my first guess would be that you've already got a copy of your node.js script running in the background which is holding the connection.
I believe connection refused is a tcp/ip error message, rather than something from MySQL which suggests that it is either not running or is running on another port or with sockets.
Could you try telnet'ing to port 3308? To see if the server is running on that port?
telnet localhost 3308
Can you also try:
mysql -hlocalhost -uroot -pxxx

Answer 3

Overview
For anyone else having this problem and is running mamp. I suspected the problem had to do with the network and not MySQL or Node.js.
Solution
If you open MAMP and click MySQL in the left navigation panel it will pull up the MySQL options page. In the center of the page you will see a checkbox that says,
"Allow network access to MySQL".
Check this box and then restart your MAMP. At this point you can now test your connection to MySQL with telnet or a node.js script.
Hint
Remember you can check which port your MySQL is running on by opening MAMP and clicking the ports link on the left navigation panel.
Visual Aid

Answer 4

For some very odd reason, my computer only allowed me to have port 3306 as default port for my connection in order for it to work.

Answer 5

Mac OS on M1 MacBook Pro here with MySQL installation via brew:
Changing the host from 'localhost' to '127.0.0.1' and creating a different user with a password solved this issue for me.
For some reason I cannot connect to my DB with root user and no password.
I created the new user on MySQL Workbench, but you can create a new user with admin privileges via the mysql CLI also.
Just google it.
This is how my backend looks:
const express = require('express');
const mysql = require('mysql');
const app = express();
const port = 3500;
const db = mysql.createConnection({
host: '127.0.0.1',
user: 'admin',
password: 'admin',
});
db.connect((err) => {
if (err) throw err;
console.log('connected to database');
});
app.listen(port, () => {
console.log('server listening on port 3500');
});

Answer 6

I wanted to comment my solution here, just in case there were people as newbie as me in databases.
I was getting this error because I had installed the mysql NPM package correctly but I hadn't installed any implementation of MySQL on my computer (I didn't know I had to).
I'm using Arch Linux so, in my case, with the NPM package already installed in my project, I did pacman -Syu mariadb (MariaDB is the default implementation of MySQL in Arch Linux) and then configured it following the guide.
Then, you can use the root user you just configured or create a new one to use in your project. For the latter:
Enter mysql CLI by running mysql -u root -p.
Enter the password for root user.
Create a new database with CREATE DATABASE mydatabase;.
Create a new user with CREATE USER test IDENTIFIED BY "testpass";.
Grant privileges to test user to use your new database with GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mydatabase.* TO test#localhost IDENTIFIED BY "testpass";. See for more information on this.
And then, in my project, I would have:
let connection = mysql.createConnection({
host: "localhost",
user: "test",
password: "testpass",
database: "mydatabase"
});

Answer 7

If you are using MAMP please note that mysql default db_port is set to 8889 so you for this purpose I had to change it to 3306 (or whatever your app mysql db_port is set to).
My issue was that node server was connecting using port 3306, so it was giving the error below then crashing but mysql was up and seemed to establishing a connection through localhost, although I couldnt test it because node server was down.
errno: -61,
code: 'ECONNREFUSED',
syscall: 'connect',
address: '127.0.0.1',
port: 3306,
fatal: true
Once I changed the port on MAMP mysql from 8889 to 3306, node server established connection through port 3000 and giving the statement below:
server running on port 3000
The solution is: 2

Answer 8

I use Windows 10 and I have Windows Subsystem For Linux (WSFL). I can execute my project from the WSFL console, but my MySQL is installed in Windows and they can not connect, however when I execute my project from a Windows console then it works without any problems.