Natively Connect to Intercom Data in PHP

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

Intercom API Profile Settings

In the Intercom Developer Hub, go to Configure > Authentication and select your workspace to obtain an Access Token. For OAuth, register an app and retrieve the Client ID and Secret from the app's Basic Information page.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Intercom 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 Admins WHERE Email = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Admins WHERE Email = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('[email protected]'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Type FROM Admins WHERE Email = '[email protected]'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Intercom data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Type FROM Admins WHERE Email = '[email protected]'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Id"] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Intercom data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Admins WHERE Email = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('[email protected]'));
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 Intercom-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.