This is actually more a PHP question but since it refers to a MySQL database I thought I would ask here. I may not be looking in the right places but, I can't seem to find a way to do a database backup through PHP (other than BACKUP TABLE, which I don't want to use if possible)

What I mean is this: I want to create a page that will allow me to click one button to initiate a backup process. That action will then start a dump of a specified database to a text file that could then be shown on a succeeding (success) page as a link for download (If there's a way to zip prior to downloading, which would be even better). I intend on using this as a manual backup process, so I want it to work like the mysqldump.exe or mysqlhotcopy.exe. (All the tables are MyISAM)

The only way I see this working would be to write in PHP a long script that will manually create that dump file itself by using SELECT and so forth. This seems a bit redundant and extravagant a way to go.

Any help would be appreciated.