Natively Connect to Box Data in PHP

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

Box uses the OAuth standard to authenticate. To authenticate to Box, obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL by registering an app. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Box Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Files WHERE Id = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Files WHERE Id = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('123'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Size FROM Files");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Size FROM Files");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Name"] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Box data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Files WHERE Id = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('123'));
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 Box-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.