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Natively Connect to Facebook Data in PHP


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

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

Most tables require user authentication as well as application authentication. Facebook uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate to Facebook, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Facebook.

See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Facebook 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Facebook Source","user","password"); ... odbc_close($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 Posts WHERE Target = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Facebook Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Posts WHERE Target = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('thesimpsons'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Facebook Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT FromName, LikesCount FROM Posts");

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Facebook data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT FromName, LikesCount FROM Posts"); while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){ echo $row["FromName"] . "\n"; }

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

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

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The Facebook ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live Facebook account data, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Facebook data like you would a database - read, write, and update Facebook Posts, Groups, Events, Places, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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