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Natively Connect to Box Data in PHP


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

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

Box uses the OAuth standard to authenticate. To authenticate to Box, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL by registering an app. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Box Source","user","password"); ... odbc_close($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 Files WHERE Id = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Files WHERE Id = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('123'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Size FROM Files");

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Size FROM Files"); while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){ echo $row["Name"] . "\n"; }

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Files WHERE Id = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('123')); 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 Box-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

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

Access Box like you would a database - read, write, and update Files, Folders, Tasks, Groups, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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