Natively Connect to Clarifai Data in PHP

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

Clarifai API Profile Settings

Clarifai uses Personal Access Tokens (PATs) for authentication. To obtain a PAT:

1. Log in to your Clarifai account at https://clarifai.com.
2. Navigate to your profile settings and select Security.
3. Click Create Personal Access Token.
4. Select the required scopes and click Create Token.
5. Copy the generated token (it will only be shown once).

After obtaining your Personal Access Token, set the following connection properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

• APIKey: Set this to your Clarifai Personal Access Token (PAT).

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Clarifai 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 Apps WHERE UserId = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Apps WHERE UserId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('my-user-id'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM Apps WHERE UserId = 'my-user-id'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Clarifai data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM Apps WHERE UserId = 'my-user-id'");
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 Clarifai data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Apps WHERE UserId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('my-user-id'));
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 Clarifai-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.