Access Strava Data from MySQL in PHP
You can use the CData SQL Gateway and ODBC Driver for Strava to access Strava data from MySQL clients, without needing to perform an ETL or cache data. Follow the steps below to connect to Strava data in real time through PHP's standard MySQL interfaces, mysqli and PDO_MySQL.
Connect to Strava Data
If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.
To authenticate to Strava, and connect to your own data or to allow other users to connect to their data, you can use the OAuth standard.
Using OAuth Authentication
You must create a custom OAuth application to connect to Strava. To create a custom OAuth application:
- Log into the Strava API Settings page
- Create a new application or select an existing application
- Set the "Authorization Callback Domain" to your callback URL domain (e.g. localhost)
- Note down the Client ID and Client Secret
After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:
- AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client ID from your Strava API application.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the Client Secret from your Strava API application.
- CallbackURL: Set this to the redirect URI matching your application's callback domain.
Example connection string:
Profile=C:\profiles\Strava.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackURL=http://localhost:33333;
Configure the SQL Gateway
See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Strava data as a virtual MySQL database. You will configure a MySQL remoting service that listens for MySQL requests from clients. The service can be configured in the SQL Gateway UI.

Connect in PHP
The following examples show how to use object-oriented interfaces to connect and execute queries. Initialize the connection object with the following parameters to connect to the virtual MySQL database:
- Host: Specify the remote host location where the service is running. In this case "localhost" is used for the remote host setting since the service is running on the local machine.
- Username: Specify the username for a user you authorized on the SQL Gateway's Users tab.
- Password: Specify the password for the authorized user account.
- Database Name: Specify the system DSN as the database name.
- Port: Specify the port the service is running on; port 3306 in this example.
mysqli
<?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "user", "password", "CData API Sys","3306");
?>
PDO
<?php
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=CData API Sys;port=3306', 'user', 'password');
?>
Query in PHP
With the connection established, you can then access tables. The following steps walk through the example:
- Query the table; for example, Athlete. The results will be stored as an associative array in the $result object.
- Iterate over each row and column, printing the values to display in the PHP page.
- Close the connection.
mysqli
$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT , FROM Athlete WHERE = ''");
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
foreach ($row as $k=>$v) {
echo "$k : $v";
echo "<br>";
}
}
$mysqli->close();
PDO
$result = $pdo->query("SELECT , FROM Athlete WHERE = ''");
while($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
foreach ($row as $k=>$v) {
echo "$k : $v";
echo "<br>";
}
}
$result = null;
$pdo = null;