Natively Connect to Guru Data in PHP

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
The CData ODBC driver for Guru enables you to create PHP applications with connectivity to Guru data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

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

Guru API Profile Settings

In Guru, navigate to Settings > API and click Create New API Token. Use your email address as the User and the generated token as the Password.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Guru 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 Analytics WHERE TeamId = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Analytics WHERE TeamId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('team-12345'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT User, Type FROM Analytics WHERE TeamId = 'team-12345'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Guru data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT User, Type FROM Analytics WHERE TeamId = 'team-12345'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["User"] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Guru data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Analytics WHERE TeamId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('team-12345'));
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 Guru-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

Ready to get started?

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