Natively Connect to QuickBooks Online Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for QuickBooks Online into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build QuickBooks Online-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to QuickBooks Online data, execute queries, and output the results.

Getting Started

---

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.

QuickBooks Online uses the OAuth authentication standard. OAuth requires the authenticating user to log in through the browser. To authenticate using OAuth, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Intuit. Additionally, if you want to connect to sandbox data, set UseSandbox to true.

See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC QuickBooksOnline 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC QuickBooksOnline Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Customers WHERE FullyQualifiedName = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC QuickBooksOnline Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE FullyQualifiedName = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Cook, Brian'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC QuickBooksOnline Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT DisplayName, Balance FROM Customers");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC QuickBooks Online data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT DisplayName, Balance FROM Customers");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["DisplayName"] . "\n";
}

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC QuickBooks Online data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE FullyQualifiedName = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Cook, Brian'));
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 QuickBooks Online-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.