Access Okta Data from MySQL in PHP

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

Connect to Okta 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.

To connect to Okta, set the Domain connection string property to your Okta domain.

You will use OAuth to authenticate with Okta, so you need to create a custom OAuth application.

Creating a Custom OAuth Application

From your Okta account:

1. Sign in to your Okta developer edition organization with your administrator account.
2. In the Admin Console, go to Applications > Applications.
3. Click Create App Integration.
4. For the Sign-in method, select OIDC - OpenID Connect.
5. For Application type, choose Web Application.
6. Enter a name for your custom application.
7. Set the Grant Type to Authorization Code. If you want the token to be automatically refreshed, also check Refresh Token.
8. Set the callback URL:
   • For desktop applications and headless machines, use http://localhost:33333 or another port number of your choice. The URI you set here becomes the property.
   • For web applications, set the callback URL to a trusted redirect URL. This URL is the web location the user returns to with the token that verifies that your application has been granted access.
9. In the Assignments section, either select Limit access to selected groups and add a group, or skip group assignment for now.
10. Save the OAuth application.
11. The application's Client Id and Client Secret are displayed on the application's General tab. Record these for future use. You will use the Client Id to set the OAuthClientId and the Client Secret to set the OAuthClientSecret.
12. Check the Assignments tab to confirm that all users who must access the application are assigned to the application.
13. On the Okta API Scopes tab, select the scopes you wish to grant to the OAuth application. These scopes determine the data that the app has permission to read, so a scope for a particular view must be granted for the driver to have permission to query that view. To confirm the scopes required for each view, see the view-specific pages in Data Model < Views in the Help documentation.

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Okta 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 Okta Sys","3306");
?>

PDO

<?php
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=CData Okta 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, Users. 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 = $mysqli->query("SELECT Id, ProfileFirstName FROM Users WHERE Status = 'Active'");
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
 foreach ($row as $k=>$v) {
 echo "$k : $v";
 echo "<br>"; 
 }
}
$mysqli->close();

PDO

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