Natively Connect to Scrapfly Data in PHP

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

The Scrapfly API uses API Key authentication. The API key is passed as the key query parameter on every request.

Using API Key Authentication

Your Scrapfly API key is required to create a connection. To obtain your API key:

1. Log into your Scrapfly account at scrapfly.io.
2. Navigate to Dashboard and select API Keys.
3. Copy your API key (begins with scp-live- for production or scp-test- for the test environment).

After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
• APIKey: Set this to your Scrapfly API key.

Example connection string:

Profile=C:\profiles\Scrapfly.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Scrapfly 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 Account WHERE  = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

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

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ,  FROM Account WHERE  = ''");
  

Process Results

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

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

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

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