Natively Connect to Certinia Data in PHP

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

There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Certinia: login credentials, SSO, and OAuth.

Authenticating with a Login and Token

Set the User and Password to your login credentials. Additionally, set the SecurityToken. By default, the SecurityToken is required, but you can make it optional by allowing a range of trusted IP addresses.

To disable the security token:

1. Log in to Certinia and enter "Network Access" in the Quick Find box in the setup section.
2. Add your IP address to the list of trusted IP addresses.

To obtain the security token:

1. Open the personal information page on certinia.com.
2. Click the link to reset your security token. The token will be emailed to you.
3. Specify the security token in the SecurityToken connection property or append it to the Password.

Authenticating with OAuth

If you do not have access to the user name and password or do not want to require them, use the OAuth user consent flow. See the OAuth section in the Help for an authentication guide.

Connecting to Certinia Sandbox Accounts

Set UseSandbox to true (false by default) to use a Certinia sandbox account. Ensure that you specify a sandbox user name in User.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Certinia Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Account WHERE Industry = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Account WHERE Industry = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Floppy Disks'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT BillingState, Name FROM Account WHERE Industry = 'Floppy Disks'");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT BillingState, Name FROM Account WHERE Industry = 'Floppy Disks'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["BillingState"] . "\n";
}

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

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