Natively Connect to Alchemy Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Alchemy into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Alchemy-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Alchemy data, execute queries, and output the results.

Configure a DSN

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Alchemy Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Alchemy.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Alchemy (see below).

Alchemy API Profile Settings

Alchemy uses API key authentication. The API key is supplied in the request URL path. To obtain an API key:

1. Sign in to your Alchemy account at https://dashboard.alchemy.com.
2. Open an existing app or create a new one.
3. Copy the app's API key from the API Key dialog.

After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
• Network: Optional. The blockchain network slug for NFT API requests (for example, eth-mainnet, base-mainnet, polygon-mainnet). Defaults to eth-mainnet.

Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

• APIKey: Set this to your Alchemy app API key.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Alchemy by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");

Connections opened with odbc_connect are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the odbc_pconnect method are still open after the script ends. This enables other scripts to share that connection when they connect with the same credentials. By sharing connections among your scripts, you can save system resources, and queries execute faster.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly

Create Prepared Statements

Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the odbc_prepare function.

$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM ContractsForOwner WHERE Owner = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM ContractsForOwner WHERE Owner = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Address, Name FROM ContractsForOwner WHERE Owner = '0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045'");
  

Process Results

Access a row in the result set as an array with the odbc_fetch_array function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Alchemy data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Address, Name FROM ContractsForOwner WHERE Owner = '0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Address"] . "\n";
}

Display the result set in an HTML table with the odbc_result_all function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Alchemy data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM ContractsForOwner WHERE Owner = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045'));
if($success)
  odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the driver's supported SQL in the help documentation. The code examples above are Alchemy-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.