Natively Connect to Exact Online Data in PHP

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

Exact Online uses the OAuth authentication standard. You can use the embedded OAuth credentials or you can register an OAuth app with Exact to obtain your own. In addition to the OAuth values, provide the Region. If Division is not set, the default Division is determined.

See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for more information.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ExactOnline 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC ExactOnline Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Accounts WHERE IsCompetitor = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ExactOnline Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Accounts WHERE IsCompetitor = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('False'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ExactOnline Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, CreditLinePurchase FROM Accounts");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Exact Online data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, CreditLinePurchase FROM Accounts");
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 Exact Online data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Accounts WHERE IsCompetitor = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('False'));
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 Exact Online-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.