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Avalara AvaTax Icon Avalara ODBC Driver

The AvaTax ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from AvaTax, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access AvaTax data like you would a database - read, write, and update AvaTax Accounts, Customers, TaxCodes, Transactions, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Natively Connect to Avalara AvaTax Data in PHP


The CData ODBC driver for Avalara AvaTax enables you to create PHP applications with connectivity to Avalara AvaTax data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Avalara AvaTax into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Avalara AvaTax-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Avalara AvaTax 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.

The primary method for performing basic authentication is to provide your login credentials, as follows:

  • User: Set this to your username.
  • Password: Set this to your password.

Optionally, if you are making use of a sandbox environment, set the following:

  • UseSandbox: Set this to true if you are authenticating with a sandbox account.

Authenticating Using Account Number and License Key

Alternatively, you can authenticate using your account number and license key. Connect to data using the following:

  • AccountId: Set this to your Account Id. The Account Id is listed in the upper right hand corner of the admin console.
  • LicenseKey: Set this to your Avalara Avatax license key. You can generate a license key by logging into Avalara Avatax as an account administrator and navigating to Settings -> Reset License Key.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC AvalaraAvatax 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC AvalaraAvatax Source","user","password"); ... odbc_close($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 Transactions WHERE Code = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC AvalaraAvatax Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Transactions WHERE Code = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('051349'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC AvalaraAvatax Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, TotalTax FROM Transactions WHERE Code = '051349'");

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Avalara AvaTax data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, TotalTax FROM Transactions WHERE Code = '051349'"); while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){ echo $row["Id"] . "\n"; }

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Avalara AvaTax data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Transactions WHERE Code = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('051349')); 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 Avalara AvaTax-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.