Natively Connect to Dynamics NAV Data in PHP

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

Before you can connect, OData Services will need to be enabled on the server. Once OData Services are enabled, you will be able to query any Services that are published on the server.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid Dynamics NAV user credentials. In addition, specify a URL to a valid Dynamics NAV server organization root and a ServerInstance. If there is not a Service Default Company for the server, set the Company as well.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC DynamicsNAV 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC DynamicsNAV Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Customer WHERE Name = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC DynamicsNAV Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Bob'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC DynamicsNAV Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Prices_Including_VAT FROM Customer");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Dynamics NAV data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Prices_Including_VAT FROM Customer");
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 Dynamics NAV data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Bob'));
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 Dynamics NAV-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.