Natively Connect to Contentful Data in PHP

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

Contentful API Profile Settings

Obtain your Content Delivery API access token from your Contentful space settings under Settings > API Keys. Your SpaceId is visible in your Contentful workspace configuration.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Contentful 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 Assets WHERE ContentType = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Assets WHERE ContentType = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('image/jpeg'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, SpaceId FROM Assets WHERE ContentType = 'image/jpeg'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Contentful data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, SpaceId FROM Assets WHERE ContentType = 'image/jpeg'");
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 Contentful data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Assets WHERE ContentType = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('image/jpeg'));
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 Contentful-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.