Natively Connect to SuiteCRM Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for SuiteCRM into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build SuiteCRM-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to SuiteCRM 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 User and Password properties must be set to valid SuiteCRM user credentials. Additionally, specify the URL to the SuiteCRM application, for example http://suite.crm.com.

Note that retrieving SuiteCRM metadata can be expensive. It is advised that you store the metadata locally as described in the Caching Metadata section of the data provider help documentation.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SuiteCRM 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC SuiteCRM Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Accounts WHERE Industry = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SuiteCRM Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Accounts WHERE Industry = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Manufacturing'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SuiteCRM Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Industry FROM Accounts");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SuiteCRM data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Name, Industry FROM Accounts");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Name"] . "\n";
}

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

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