Not able to make connection to mysql 8 in php

Question

I am trying to connect to mysql server using php but it gives the following error

Connection failed: The server requested authentication method unknown to the client

mysql server version is 8.0.12 and php version is 7.2.9. My code connect to mysql server

<?php
$servername = "127.0.0.1";
$username = "root";
$password = "mypassword";
// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
} 
echo "Connected successfully";
?>

This question has been previously asked before here but the solution did not work for me so I am asking this again. Thanks

edit: I re-installed php now it gives the following for the same code

This page isn’t working
127.0.0.1 is currently unable to handle this request.
HTTP ERROR 500

Answer 1

I had a similar problem and found that you can change mysql authentication by running the following code via Workbench

ALTER USER root@localhost IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'new-password-here'