Natively Connect to ScrapingBee Data in PHP

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

Using API Key Authentication

ScrapingBee uses API key authentication. To obtain an API key:

1. Sign in to your ScrapingBee account at https://app.scrapingbee.com
2. Navigate to the Dashboard and locate your API key in the top section.
3. Copy the API key for use in the connection string.

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

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

• APIKey: Set this to your ScrapingBee API key.

Example Connection String

Profile=C:\profiles\ScrapingBee.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key";

Connecting to ScrapingBee

Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to ScrapingBee and query data from any of the available tables. All tables require at least one input parameter (such as a search query or product ID) to retrieve data.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to ScrapingBee 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 GoogleSearchResults WHERE SearchQuery = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

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

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

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

Process Results

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

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