Querying the system catalog

Hello group

I am trying to follow through on advice I received from you earlier. I would like to check for my database when I logon and if it is not there create it( I am using php to write web apps). I am able to connect to the template1 and query for pg_database. But I am getting a parse error on the following (XXX).  

Error message:

“Expected T_STRING or T_VARIABLE”

Code :

$link=pg_connect('user=marcel dbname=template1') or die ("Couldn't connect to template1 try again.<br>");

            $query = "SELECT * FROM pg_database";

            $result = pg_query ($query) or die ("Couldn't get the database names".pg_last_error());

            // If it worked get the database names.

            $database= pg_fetch_array ($result) or print ("Can't get the array of databases<br>");                     

XXX       print (" the 1st database is $database['datname'].<br>");  

            die ("Finshed my test.<br>");     

Is this the correct way to query the system catalog for the existing databases? Is this questions addressed to the wrong group and maybe should be addressed to the php_pgsql group?

Again thanks for the help

Marcel Wolf