Natively Connect to Act-On Data in PHP

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

ActOn uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

See the Getting Started guide in the CData driver documentation for more information.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Act-On by calling the or methods. To close connections, use or .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ActOn 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC ActOn Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Images WHERE FolderName = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ActOn Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Images WHERE FolderName = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('New Folder'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ActOn Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM Images");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Act-On data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM Images");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Id"] . "\n";
}

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

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