Natively Connect to Zoho Creator Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Zoho Creator into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Zoho Creator-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Zoho Creator 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 connector is already registered with Zoho Creator as an OAuth application.

If you would prefer to use your own custom OAuth app, see the Help documentation.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ZohoCreator 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC ZohoCreator Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Leave_Types WHERE Leave_Type = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ZohoCreator Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Leave_Types WHERE Leave_Type = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Sick'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC ZohoCreator Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ID, Leave_Type FROM Leave_Types WHERE Leave_Type = 'Sick'");
 

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Zoho Creator data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ID, Leave_Type FROM Leave_Types WHERE Leave_Type = 'Sick'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["ID"] . "\n";
}

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

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