Access Hugging Face Data from MySQL in PHP

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Connect to Hugging Face through the standard MySQL libraries in PHP.

You can use the CData SQL Gateway and ODBC Driver for Hugging Face to access Hugging Face data from MySQL clients, without needing to perform an ETL or cache data. Follow the steps below to connect to Hugging Face data in real time through PHP's standard MySQL interfaces, mysqli and PDO_MySQL.

Connect to Hugging Face Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

HuggingFace Hub uses token-based authentication to enable access to its API. The API provides access to machine learning models, datasets, spaces, papers, and other resources on the HuggingFace Hub platform.

Using API Key Authentication

To authenticate to HuggingFace Hub, you will need to provide an API Key (Access Token). To obtain your access token:

  1. Log in to your HuggingFace account at https://huggingface.co
  2. Navigate to Settings > Access Tokens
  3. Click "New token" to create a new access token
  4. Select the appropriate permissions (read or write)
  5. Copy the token value

After obtaining your access token, set the following connection properties:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to your HuggingFace access token.

Example connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\HuggingFace.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=hf_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Hugging Face data as a virtual MySQL database. You will configure a MySQL remoting service that listens for MySQL requests from clients. The service can be configured in the SQL Gateway UI.

Creating a MySQL Remoting Service in SQL Gateway (Salesforce is shown)

Connect in PHP

The following examples show how to use object-oriented interfaces to connect and execute queries. Initialize the connection object with the following parameters to connect to the virtual MySQL database:

  • Host: Specify the remote host location where the service is running. In this case "localhost" is used for the remote host setting since the service is running on the local machine.
  • Username: Specify the username for a user you authorized on the SQL Gateway's Users tab.
  • Password: Specify the password for the authorized user account.
  • Database Name: Specify the system DSN as the database name.
  • Port: Specify the port the service is running on; port 3306 in this example.

mysqli

<?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "user", "password", "CData API Sys","3306");
?>

PDO

<?php
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=CData API Sys;port=3306', 'user', 'password');
?>

Query in PHP

With the connection established, you can then access tables. The following steps walk through the example:

  1. Query the table; for example, Collections. The results will be stored as an associative array in the $result object.
  2. Iterate over each row and column, printing the values to display in the PHP page.
  3. Close the connection.

mysqli

$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT ,  FROM Collections WHERE  = ''");
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
  foreach ($row as $k=>$v) {
    echo "$k : $v";
    echo "<br>"; 
  }
}
$mysqli->close();

PDO

$result = $pdo->query("SELECT ,  FROM Collections WHERE  = ''");
while($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
  foreach ($row as $k=>$v) {
    echo "$k : $v";
    echo "<br>"; 
  }
}
$result = null;
$pdo = null;

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Hugging Face with the API Driver

Connect to Hugging Face