Natively Connect to Strava Data in PHP

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
The CData ODBC driver for Strava enables you to create PHP applications with connectivity to Strava data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

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

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:

  1. Log into the Strava API Settings page
  2. Create a new application or select an existing application
  3. Set the "Authorization Callback Domain" to your callback URL domain (e.g. localhost)
  4. 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;

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Strava 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 Athlete WHERE  = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

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

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Strava data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ,  FROM Athlete 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 Strava data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Athlete 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 Strava-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

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