Learn more
 

Natively Connect to RSS Feeds in PHP


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

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for RSS into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build RSS-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to RSS feeds, 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 RSS and Atom feeds, as well as feeds with custom extensions. To connect to a feed, set the URL property. You can also access secure feeds. A variety of authentication mechanisms are supported. See the help documentation for details.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC RSS Source","user","password"); ... odbc_close($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 Latest News WHERE Category = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Latest News WHERE Category = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('US'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Pubdate, Author FROM RSSFeed");

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS feeds Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Pubdate, Author FROM RSSFeed"); while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){ echo $row["Author"] . "\n"; }

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS feeds Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Latest News WHERE Category = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('US')); 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 RSS-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the RSS ODBC Driver to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

RSS Icon RSS ODBC Driver

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

With the RSS ODBC Driver, accessing live RSS feeds is as easy as querying a database.

In this article

Related articles