Natively Connect to eBay Data in PHP

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

If you will be accessing your own account, you can generate an OAuthAccessToken from your developer account dashboard. You can also allow other users to securely access their own accounts.

Both of these methods require you to create an application key set to obtain values for the following connection properties: AppId, CertId, DevId, and SiteId.

The user consent flow additionally requires the RuName and CallbackURL.

See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Ebay 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Ebay Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 ItemListing WHERE ListingStatus = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Ebay Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM ItemListing WHERE ListingStatus = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('active'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Ebay Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Title, HitCount FROM ItemListing");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC eBay data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Title, HitCount FROM ItemListing");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Title"] . "\n";
}

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

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