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Connect to live data from BambooHR with the API Driver

Connect to BambooHR

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Natively Connect to BambooHR Data in PHP


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

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

BambooHR API Profile Settings

In order to authenticate to BambooHR, you'll need to provide your API Key. To generate an API key, log in and click your name in the upper right-hand corner of any page to get to the user context menu. If you have sufficient permissions, there will be an "API Keys" option in that menu to go to the page, where you can create a new API Key. Additionally, you will need to set the Domain, found in the domain name of your BambooHR account. For example if your BambooHR account is acmeinc.bamboohr.com, then the Domain should be 'acmeinc'. Set both the API Key and Domain in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to BambooHR 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 Employees WHERE Department = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

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

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, DisplayName FROM Employees WHERE Department = 'Sales'");

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC BambooHR data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, DisplayName FROM Employees WHERE Department = 'Sales'"); 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 BambooHR data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Employees WHERE Department = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('Sales')); 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 BambooHR-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.