Natively Connect to Microsoft Dataverse Data in PHP

Create PHP applications on Linux/UNIX machines with connectivity to Microsoft Dataverse data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Microsoft Dataverse-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Microsoft Dataverse data, execute queries, and output the results.

Using the CData ODBC Drivers on a UNIX/Linux Machine

The CData ODBC Drivers are supported in various Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora. There are also several libraries and packages that are required, many of which may be installed by default, depending on your system. For more information on the supported versions of Linux operating systems and the required libraries, please refer to the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation (installed and found online).

About Microsoft Dataverse Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Microsoft Dataverse (formerly the Common Data Service). Customers use CData connectivity to:

Access both Dataverse Entities and Dataverse system tables to work with exactly the data they need.
Authenticate securely with Microsoft Dataverse in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.
Use SQL stored procedures to manage Microsoft Dataverse entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

CData customers use our Dataverse connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources)or analyze live Dataverse data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).

Getting Started

Installing the Driver Manager

Before installing the driver, check that your system has a driver manager. For this article, you will use unixODBC, a free and open source ODBC Driver manager that is widely supported.

For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, you can install unixODBC with the APT package manager:


$ sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-dev

For systems based on Red Hat Linux, you can install unixODBC with yum or dnf:


$ sudo yum install unixODBC unixODBC-devel

The unixODBC driver manager reads information about drivers from an odbcinst.ini file and about data sources from an odbc.ini file. You can determine the location of the configuration files on your system by entering the following command into a terminal:


$ odbcinst -j

The output of the command will display the locations of the configuration files for ODBC data sources and registered ODBC drivers. User data sources can only be accessed by the user account whose home folder the odbc.ini is located in. System data sources can be accessed by all users. Below is an example of the output of this command:


DRIVERS............: /etc/odbcinst.ini
SYSTEM DATA SOURCES: /etc/odbc.ini
FILE DATA SOURCES..: /etc/ODBCDataSources
USER DATA SOURCES..: /home/myuser/.odbc.ini
SQLULEN Size.......: 8
SQLLEN Size........: 8
SQLSETPOSIROW Size.: 8

Installing the Driver

You can download the driver in standard package formats: the Debian .deb package format or the .rpm file format. Once you have downloaded the file, you can install the driver from the terminal.

The driver installer registers the driver with unixODBC and creates a system DSN, which can be used later in any tools or applications that support ODBC connectivity.

For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, run the following command with sudo or as root: $ dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb

For Red Hat systems or other systems that support .rpms, run the following command with sudo or as root: $ rpm -i /path/to/package.rpm

Once the driver is installed, you can list the registered drivers and defined data sources using the unixODBC driver manager:

List the Registered Driver(s)


$ odbcinst -q -d
CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse
...

List the Defined Data Source(s)


$ odbcinst -q -s
CData CDS Source
...

To use the CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse with unixODBC, ensure that the driver is configured to use UTF-16. To do so, edit the INI file for the driver (cdata.odbc.cds.ini), which can be found in the lib folder in the installation location (typically /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-cds), as follows:

cdata.odbc.cds.ini


...

[Driver]
DriverManagerEncoding = UTF-16

Modifying the DSN

The driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties. Additionally, you can create user-specific DSNs that will not require root access to modify in $HOME/.odbc.ini.

You can connect without setting any connection properties for your user credentials. Below are the minimum connection properties required to connect.

InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
OrganizationUrl: Set this to the organization URL you are connecting to, such as https://myorganization.crm.dynamics.com.
Tenant (optional): Set this if you wish to authenticate to a different tenant than your default. This is required to work with an organization not on your default Tenant.

When you connect the Common Data Service OAuth endpoint opens in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions. The OAuth process completes automatically.

/etc/odbc.ini or $HOME/.odbc.ini


[CData CDS Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse
Description = My Description
OrganizationUrl = https://myaccount.crm.dynamics.com/

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Establish a Connection

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC CDS 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.


$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC CDS Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Accounts WHERE Name = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC CDS Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Accounts WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('MyAccount'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC CDS Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT AccountId, Name FROM Accounts WHERE Name = 'MyAccount'");

Process Results

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Microsoft Dataverse data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT AccountId, Name FROM Accounts WHERE Name = 'MyAccount'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["AccountId"] . "\n";
}

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Microsoft Dataverse data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Accounts WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('MyAccount'));
if($success)
  odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the SQL queries supported by the driver in the help documentation. The code examples above are Microsoft Dataverse-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Microsoft Dataverse ODBC Driver to get started:

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Learn more:

Microsoft Dataverse ODBC Driver

The Microsoft Dataverse ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with Microsoft Dataverse, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Microsoft Dataverse like you would a database - access entities through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

CData Software is a leading provider of data access and connectivity solutions. Our standards-based connectors streamline data access and insulate customers from the complexities of integrating with on-premise or cloud databases, SaaS, APIs, NoSQL, and Big Data.

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