Natively Connect to Plaid Data in PHP

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

Access Plaid data like you would a database - read, write, and update Assets, Investments, Liabilities, Transactions, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Plaid into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Plaid-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Plaid 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.

You can connect to Plaid using the embedded OAuth connectivity. When you connect, the Plaid OAuth endpoint opens in your browser. Log in and grant permissions to complete the OAuth process. See the OAuth section in the online Help documentation for more information on other OAuth authentication flows.

Optionally set the Account Id property to return data related to a specific Account.

Establish a Connection

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Plaid 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.


$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Plaid Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Transactions WHERE Name = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Plaid Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Transactions WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Apple Store'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Plaid Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT AccountId, Name FROM Transactions WHERE Name = 'Apple Store'");

Process Results

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Plaid data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT AccountId, Name FROM Transactions WHERE Name = 'Apple Store'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["AccountId"] . "\n";
}

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Plaid data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Transactions WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Apple Store'));
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 Plaid-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.