Natively Connect to Apache Airflow Data in PHP

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
The CData ODBC driver for Apache Airflow enables you to create PHP applications with connectivity to Apache Airflow data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Apache Airflow into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Apache Airflow-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Apache Airflow 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 ApacheAirflow Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\ApacheAirflow.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for ApacheAirflow (see below).

ApacheAirflow API Profile Settings

Apache Airflow 3 uses JWT Bearer tokens for API authentication. You can generate a token from the Airflow web UI under Settings or via the Airflow CLI using airflow users create and the /api/v2/auth/token endpoint. Note that this profile targets Apache Airflow 3.x using the /api/v2 REST API. The legacy /api/v1 endpoint used by Airflow 2.x is not supported.

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to your Apache Airflow JWT Bearer token.
  • Server: Set this to the base URL of your Airflow instance (e.g. http://localhost:8080).

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Apache Airflow 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 DagRuns WHERE DagId = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM DagRuns WHERE DagId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('example_dag'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT DagRunId, State FROM DagRuns WHERE DagId = 'example_dag'");
  

Process Results

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Apache Airflow data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT DagRunId, State FROM DagRuns WHERE DagId = 'example_dag'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["DagRunId"] . "\n";
}

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Apache Airflow data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM DagRuns WHERE DagId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('example_dag'));
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 Apache Airflow-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Apache Airflow with the API Driver

Connect to Apache Airflow