Natively Connect to BugHerd Data in PHP

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

BugHerd API Profile Settings

BugHerd uses HTTP Basic authentication with an API key as the username. To obtain an API key:

1. Sign in to your BugHerd account at https://www.bugherd.com
2. Navigate to Settings > General Settings
3. Locate the API Key section and copy the generated key

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

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

• APIKey: Set this to your BugHerd API key. The driver uses the key as the Basic auth username and sets the password internally to the literal value 'x' as required by BugHerd.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to BugHerd 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 Tasks WHERE ProjectId = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Tasks WHERE ProjectId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('519666'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Title FROM Tasks WHERE ProjectId = '519666'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC BugHerd data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Title FROM Tasks WHERE ProjectId = '519666'");
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 BugHerd data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Tasks WHERE ProjectId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('519666'));
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 BugHerd-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.