Connecting to MySql database in an Ember app

I'm looking for some advice on how to connect to a MySQL database in my Ember application. I've created a dashboard with some charts using ZingChart's ember-zingchart addon, and my chart configuration JSON packets are kept in the associated controller for each template. I would need to query the db for different sets of data stored in the same table for each tab of my dashboard. Should I use PHP to connect to the database? If so, where would I place the PHP code for each template and how would I get the retrieved data into my controller? I'm still new at Ember, so if someone could nudge me in the right direction, that would be very helpful!