Natively Connect to LinkedIn Data in PHP

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

LinkedIn uses the OAuth 2 authentication standard. Obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret by registering an app with LinkedIn. For more information refer to our authentication guide.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC LinkedIn 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC LinkedIn Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 CompanyStatusUpdates WHERE EntityId = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC LinkedIn Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM CompanyStatusUpdates WHERE EntityId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('238'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC LinkedIn Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT VisibilityCode, Comment FROM CompanyStatusUpdates");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC LinkedIn data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT VisibilityCode, Comment FROM CompanyStatusUpdates");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["VisibilityCode"] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC LinkedIn data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM CompanyStatusUpdates WHERE EntityId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('238'));
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 LinkedIn-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.