Natively Connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage Data in PHP

Create PHP applications on Linux/UNIX machines with connectivity to IBM Cloud Object Storage data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build IBM Cloud Object Storage-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage data, execute queries, and output the results.

Using the CData ODBC Drivers on a UNIX/Linux Machine

The CData ODBC Drivers are supported in various Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora. There are also several libraries and packages that are required, many of which may be installed by default, depending on your system. For more information on the supported versions of Linux operating systems and the required libraries, please refer to the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation (installed and found online).

Installing the Driver Manager

Before installing the driver, check that your system has a driver manager. For this article, you will use unixODBC, a free and open source ODBC Driver manager that is widely supported.

For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, you can install unixODBC with the APT package manager:


$ sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-dev

For systems based on Red Hat Linux, you can install unixODBC with yum or dnf:


$ sudo yum install unixODBC unixODBC-devel

The unixODBC driver manager reads information about drivers from an odbcinst.ini file and about data sources from an odbc.ini file. You can determine the location of the configuration files on your system by entering the following command into a terminal:


$ odbcinst -j

The output of the command will display the locations of the configuration files for ODBC data sources and registered ODBC drivers. User data sources can only be accessed by the user account whose home folder the odbc.ini is located in. System data sources can be accessed by all users. Below is an example of the output of this command:


DRIVERS............: /etc/odbcinst.ini
SYSTEM DATA SOURCES: /etc/odbc.ini
FILE DATA SOURCES..: /etc/ODBCDataSources
USER DATA SOURCES..: /home/myuser/.odbc.ini
SQLULEN Size.......: 8
SQLLEN Size........: 8
SQLSETPOSIROW Size.: 8

Installing the Driver

You can download the driver in standard package formats: the Debian .deb package format or the .rpm file format. Once you have downloaded the file, you can install the driver from the terminal.

The driver installer registers the driver with unixODBC and creates a system DSN, which can be used later in any tools or applications that support ODBC connectivity.

For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, run the following command with sudo or as root: $ dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb

For Red Hat systems or other systems that support .rpms, run the following command with sudo or as root: $ rpm -i /path/to/package.rpm

Once the driver is installed, you can list the registered drivers and defined data sources using the unixODBC driver manager:

List the Registered Driver(s)


$ odbcinst -q -d
CData ODBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage
...

List the Defined Data Source(s)


$ odbcinst -q -s
CData IBMCloudObjectStorage Source
...

To use the CData ODBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage with unixODBC, ensure that the driver is configured to use UTF-16. To do so, edit the INI file for the driver (cdata.odbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage.ini), which can be found in the lib folder in the installation location (typically /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-ibmcloudobjectstorage), as follows:

cdata.odbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage.ini


...

[Driver]
DriverManagerEncoding = UTF-16

Modifying the DSN

The driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties. Additionally, you can create user-specific DSNs that will not require root access to modify in $HOME/.odbc.ini.

Register a New Instance of Cloud Object Storage

If you do not already have Cloud Object Storage in your IBM Cloud account, follow the procedure below to install an instance of SQL Query in your account:

Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
Navigate to the page, choose a name for your instance and click Create. You will be redirected to the instance of Cloud Object Storage you just created.

Connecting using OAuth Authentication

There are certain connection properties you need to set before you can connect. You can obtain these as follows:

API Key

To connect with IBM Cloud Object Storage, you need an API Key. You can obtain this as follows:

Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
Navigate to the Platform API Keys page.
On the middle-right corner click "Create an IBM Cloud API Key" to create a new API Key.
In the pop-up window, specify the API Key name and click "Create". Note the API Key as you can never access it again from the dashboard.

Cloud Object Storage CRN

If you have multiple accounts, you will need to specify the CloudObjectStorageCRN explicitly. To find the appropriate value, you can:

Query the Services view. This will list your IBM Cloud Object Storage instances along with the CRN for each.
Locate the CRN directly in IBM Cloud. To do so, navigate to your IBM Cloud Dashboard. In the Resource List, Under Storage, select your Cloud Object Storage resource to get its CRN.

Connecting to Data

You can now set the following to connect to data:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
ApiKey: Set this to your API key which was noted during setup.
CloudObjectStorageCRN (Optional): Set this to the cloud object storage CRN you want to work with. While the connector attempts to retrieve this automatically, specifying this explicitly is recommended if you have more than Cloud Object Storage account.

When you connect, the connector completes the OAuth process.

Extracts the access token and authenticates requests.
Saves OAuth values in OAuthSettingsLocation to be persisted across connections.

/etc/odbc.ini or $HOME/.odbc.ini


[CData IBMCloudObjectStorage Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage
Description = My Description
ApiKey = myApiKey
CloudObjectStorageCRN = MyInstanceCRN
Region = myRegion
OAuthClientId = MyOAuthClientId
OAuthClientSecret = myOAuthClientSecret

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to IBM Cloud Object Storage by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC IBMCloudObjectStorage 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.


$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC IBMCloudObjectStorage Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Objects WHERE Bucket = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC IBMCloudObjectStorage Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Objects WHERE Bucket = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('someBucket'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC IBMCloudObjectStorage Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Key, Etag FROM Objects WHERE Bucket = 'someBucket'");

Process Results

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC IBM Cloud Object Storage data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Key, Etag FROM Objects WHERE Bucket = 'someBucket'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Key"] . "\n";
}

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC IBM Cloud Object Storage data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Objects WHERE Bucket = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('someBucket'));
if($success)
  odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the SQL queries supported by the driver in the help documentation. The code examples above are IBM Cloud Object Storage-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

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IBM Cloud Object Storage ODBC Driver

The IBM Cloud Object Storage ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from IBM Cloud Object Storage, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access IBM Cloud Object Storage data like you would a database - read, write, and update IBM Cloud Object Storage IBMCloudObject, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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