Natively Connect to Tanda Data in PHP

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

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Tanda into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Tanda-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Tanda 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 Tanda Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Tanda.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Tanda (see below).

Tanda API Profile Settings

Register an OAuth application at the Tanda applications page by clicking New App and entering your app name and redirect URI.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Tanda 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 ActiveShifts WHERE Status = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

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

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ShiftId, UserId FROM ActiveShifts WHERE Status = 'clocked_in'");
  

Process Results

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

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

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

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

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Tanda with the API Driver

Connect to Tanda