Natively Connect to Stack Exchange Data in PHP

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

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Stack Exchange Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\StackExchange.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Stack Exchange (see below).

Stack Exchange API Profile Settings

Register an application on StackApps to obtain an API Key. The Site property specifies which Stack Exchange site to query (e.g., stackoverflow).

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Stack Exchange 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 Answers WHERE IsAccepted = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

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

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT AnswerId, CreationDate FROM Answers WHERE IsAccepted = 'true'");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Stack Exchange data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT AnswerId, CreationDate FROM Answers WHERE IsAccepted = 'true'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["AnswerId"] . "\n";
}

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

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