Natively Connect to Bullhorn CRM Data in PHP

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

Begin by providing your Bullhorn CRM account credentials in the following:

• DataCenterCode: Set this to the data center code which responds to your data center. Refer to the list of data-center-specific Bullhorn API URLs: https://bullhorn.github.io/Data-Center-URLs/

If you are uncertain about your data center code, codes like CLS2, CLS21, etc. are cluster IDs that are contained in a user's browser URL (address bar) once they are logged in.

Example: https://cls21.bullhornstaffing.com/BullhornSTAFFING/MainFrame.jsp?#no-ba... indicates that the logged in user is on CLS21.

Authenticating with OAuth

Bullhorn CRM uses the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create and configure a custom OAuth app. See the Help documentation for more information.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC BullhornCRM 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC BullhornCRM Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Candidate WHERE CandidateName = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC BullhornCRM Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Candidate WHERE CandidateName = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Jane Doe'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC BullhornCRM Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, CandidateName FROM Candidate WHERE CandidateName = 'Jane Doe'");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Bullhorn CRM data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, CandidateName FROM Candidate WHERE CandidateName = 'Jane Doe'");
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 Bullhorn CRM data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Candidate WHERE CandidateName = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Jane Doe'));
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 Bullhorn CRM-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.