Natively Connect to Factorial Data in PHP

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

Authentication

Factorial uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication to connect to your HR data or to allow other users to connect to their data.

Using OAuth Authentication

To connect using OAuth, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your Factorial admin panel and create a new OAuth application.
2. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret from your application configuration.
3. Configure the following connection properties:

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to your OAuth Client ID.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to your OAuth Client Secret.
• Scope: Set this to specify the data access permissions (default: "read write").

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Factorial 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 Agreements WHERE ProcessId = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Agreements WHERE ProcessId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('123'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ,  FROM Agreements WHERE ProcessId = '123'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Factorial data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ,  FROM Agreements WHERE ProcessId = '123'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row[""] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Factorial data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Agreements WHERE ProcessId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('123'));
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 Factorial-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.