Natively Connect to Outlook Data in PHP

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

Using OAuth Authentication

Microsoft Graph API uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication. You must register an application in the Microsoft Azure Portal to obtain OAuth credentials (Client ID and Client Secret).

Obtaining OAuth Credentials

1. Log in to the Azure Portal.
2. Navigate to Azure Active Directory > App registrations.
3. Click New registration to create a new application.
4. Enter an application name and select the appropriate account types.
5. Set the Redirect URI to your application's callback URL (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).
6. Click Register to create the application.
7. On the application overview page, copy the Application (client) ID - this is your OAuthClientId.
8. Navigate to Certificates & secrets and create a new client secret.
9. Copy the client secret value - this is your OAuthClientSecret.
10. Navigate to API permissions and add the required Microsoft Graph API permissions:
    • Mail.Read - For accessing email messages
    • Contacts.Read - For accessing contacts
    • Calendars.Read - For accessing calendar events
    • Tasks.Read - For accessing To Do tasks
    • offline_access - For obtaining refresh tokens
11. Click Grant admin consent to grant these permissions.

Connecting with OAuth

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

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. The CData API Profile for Outlook will automatically walk through the OAuth process in order to obtain the access token.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to the Application (client) ID from Azure Portal.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret value from Azure Portal.
• TenantId: Set this to your Azure AD tenant identifier (GUID or domain name like 'contoso.onmicrosoft.com').
• CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app registration (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).

Example connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Outlook.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;TenantId=your_tenant_id;CallbackUrl=http://localhost:33333;

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 CalendarGroupCalendars WHERE CalendarGroupId = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM CalendarGroupCalendars WHERE CalendarGroupId = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('group_id'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT , FROM CalendarGroupCalendars WHERE CalendarGroupId = 'group_id'");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Outlook data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT , FROM CalendarGroupCalendars WHERE CalendarGroupId = 'group_id'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row[""] . "\n";
}

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

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