Natively Connect to Freshdesk Data in PHP

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

FreshDesk makes use of basic authentication. To connect to data, set the following connection properties:

• Domain: Set this to the domain associated with your FreshDesk account. For example, in your URL: https://my_domain.freshdesk.com.
• APIKey: Set this to the API key associated with your FreshDesk account. To retrieve your API key, Log into your support Portal -> Click on profile picture in the top right corner -> profile settings page. The API key will be available below the change password section to the right.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC FreshDesk 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC FreshDesk Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Tickets WHERE Status = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC FreshDesk Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Tickets WHERE Status = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('2'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC FreshDesk Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM Tickets WHERE Status = '2'");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Freshdesk data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM Tickets WHERE Status = '2'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Id"] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Freshdesk data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Tickets WHERE Status = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('2'));
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 Freshdesk-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.