Natively Connect to PayPal Data in PHP

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

The provider surfaces tables from two PayPal APIs. The APIs use different authentication methods.

• The REST API uses the OAuth standard. To authenticate to the REST API, set the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL properties.
• The Classic API requires Signature API credentials. To authenticate to the Classic API, obtain an API username, password, and signature.

See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the necessary API credentials.

To select the API you want to work with, you can set the Schema property to REST or SOAP. By default the SOAP schema will be used.

For testing purposes you can set UseSandbox to true and use sandbox credentials.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC PayPal 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC PayPal Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Transactions WHERE TransactionClass = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC PayPal Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Transactions WHERE TransactionClass = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Received'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC PayPal Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Date, GrossAmount FROM Transactions");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC PayPal data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Date, GrossAmount FROM Transactions");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Date"] . "\n";
}

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

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