Natively Connect to Access Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Access into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Access-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Access 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 connect, set the DataSource property to the path to the Access database.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Access by calling the or methods. To close connections, use or .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Access Source","user","password");

Connections opened with are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Access Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly

Create Prepared Statements

Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the function.

$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE ShipCity = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Access Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE ShipCity = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('New York'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Access Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Orders.Freight, Customers.ContactName FROM Customers INNER JOIN Orders ON Customers.CustomerId=Orders.CustomerId");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Access data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Orders.Freight, Customers.ContactName FROM Customers INNER JOIN Orders ON Customers.CustomerId=Orders.CustomerId");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["OrderName"] . "\n";
}

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

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