Access Foursquare Data from MySQL in PHP

You can use the CData SQL Gateway and ODBC Driver for Foursquare to access Foursquare data from MySQL clients, without needing to perform an ETL or cache data. Follow the steps below to connect to Foursquare data in real time through PHP's standard MySQL interfaces, mysqli and PDO_MySQL.

Connect to Foursquare Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

Using API Key Authentication

Foursquare Places API uses Service Key (Bearer token) authentication. To obtain a Service Key:

1. Go to the Foursquare Developer Console at https://foursquare.com/developers/
2. Create a new project or select an existing one
3. Navigate to the API Keys section
4. Generate a new Service Key for the Places API

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
• ServiceKey: Set this to your Foursquare Service Key obtained from the Developer Console.
• XPlacesApiVersion: (Optional) Set this to the API version date. Defaults to 2025-06-17.

Example APIKey connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Foursquare.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_personal_access_token';

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Foursquare data as a virtual MySQL database. You will configure a MySQL remoting service that listens for MySQL requests from clients. The service can be configured in the SQL Gateway UI.

👁 Creating a MySQL Remoting Service in SQL Gateway (Salesforce is shown)

Connect in PHP

The following examples show how to use object-oriented interfaces to connect and execute queries. Initialize the connection object with the following parameters to connect to the virtual MySQL database:

• Host: Specify the remote host location where the service is running. In this case "localhost" is used for the remote host setting since the service is running on the local machine.
• Username: Specify the username for a user you authorized on the SQL Gateway's Users tab.
• Password: Specify the password for the authorized user account.
• Database Name: Specify the system DSN as the database name.
• Port: Specify the port the service is running on; port 3306 in this example.

mysqli

<?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "user", "password", "CData API Sys","3306");
?>

PDO

<?php
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=CData API Sys;port=3306', 'user', 'password');
?>

Query in PHP

With the connection established, you can then access tables. The following steps walk through the example:

1. Query the table; for example, Autocomplete. The results will be stored as an associative array in the $result object.
2. Iterate over each row and column, printing the values to display in the PHP page.
3. Close the connection.

mysqli

$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT , FROM Autocomplete WHERE Query = 'abc'");
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
 foreach ($row as $k=>$v) {
 echo "$k : $v";
 echo "<br>"; 
 }
}
$mysqli->close();

PDO

$result = $pdo->query("SELECT , FROM Autocomplete WHERE Query = 'abc'");
while($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
 foreach ($row as $k=>$v) {
 echo "$k : $v";
 echo "<br>"; 
 }
}
$result = null;
$pdo = null;