Natively Connect to Google Forms Data in PHP

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

Google Forms API Profile Settings

In the Google Cloud Console, create a project, enable the Google Forms API, and create OAuth 2.0 credentials to obtain your Client ID and Client Secret.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Google Forms 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 Forms WHERE CreationTime = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Forms WHERE CreationTime = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('2026-01-15'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT FormId, Title FROM Forms WHERE CreationTime = '2026-01-15'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Google Forms data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT FormId, Title FROM Forms WHERE CreationTime = '2026-01-15'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["FormId"] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Google Forms data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Forms WHERE CreationTime = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('2026-01-15'));
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 Google Forms-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.