Natively Connect to OData Services in PHP



The CData ODBC driver for OData enables you to create PHP applications with connectivity to OData services. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

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

About OData Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live OData services data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Access OData versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, working with legacy services and the latest features and capabilities.
  • Leverage advanced query options, including $filter, $select, and $expand, enhancing data retrieval from 3rd party tools.
  • Use Server-side execution of aggregation and grouping to minimize data transfer and boost performance.
  • Authenticate securely using a variety of schemes, including Azure AD, digest, negotiate, NTLM, OAuth, and more means secure authentication with every connection.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to manage OData service entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

Customers use CData's solutions to regularly integrate their OData services with preferred tools, such as Power BI, MicroStrategy, or Tableau, and to replicate data from OData services to their databases or data warehouses.


Getting Started


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.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid OData user credentials. In addition, you will need to specify a URL to a valid OData server organization root or OData services file.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to OData by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC OData 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC OData Source","user","password"); ... odbc_close($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 Orders WHERE ShipCity = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC OData Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE ShipCity = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('New York'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC OData Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Orders.Freight, Customers.ContactName FROM Customers INNER JOIN Orders ON Customers.CustomerId=Orders.CustomerId");

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC OData services Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Orders.Freight, Customers.ContactName FROM Customers INNER JOIN Orders ON Customers.CustomerId=Orders.CustomerId"); while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){ echo $row["OrderName"] . "\n"; }

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC OData services Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE ShipCity = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('New York')); 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 OData-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

Ready to get started?

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Learn more:

OData Icon OData ODBC Driver

The OData ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live OData Services, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access OData services like you would any standard database - read, write, and update etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.