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Natively Connect to Certinia Data in PHP
Create PHP applications on Linux/UNIX machines with connectivity to Certinia data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.
Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Certinia into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Certinia-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Certinia data, execute queries, and output the results.
Using the CData ODBC Drivers on a UNIX/Linux Machine
The CData ODBC Drivers are supported in various Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora. There are also several libraries and packages that are required, many of which may be installed by default, depending on your system. For more information on the supported versions of Linux operating systems and the required libraries, please refer to the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation (installed and found online).
Installing the Driver Manager
Before installing the driver, check that your system has a driver manager. For this article, you will use unixODBC, a free and open source ODBC Driver manager that is widely supported.
For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, you can install unixODBC with the APT package manager:
$ sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-dev
For systems based on Red Hat Linux, you can install unixODBC with yum or dnf:
$ sudo yum install unixODBC unixODBC-devel
The unixODBC driver manager reads information about drivers from an odbcinst.ini file and about data sources from an odbc.ini file. You can determine the location of the configuration files on your system by entering the following command into a terminal:
$ odbcinst -j
The output of the command will display the locations of the configuration files for ODBC data sources and registered ODBC drivers. User data sources can only be accessed by the user account whose home folder the odbc.ini is located in. System data sources can be accessed by all users. Below is an example of the output of this command:
DRIVERS............: /etc/odbcinst.ini
SYSTEM DATA SOURCES: /etc/odbc.ini
FILE DATA SOURCES..: /etc/ODBCDataSources
USER DATA SOURCES..: /home/myuser/.odbc.ini
SQLULEN Size.......: 8
SQLLEN Size........: 8
SQLSETPOSIROW Size.: 8
Installing the Driver
You can download the driver in standard package formats: the Debian .deb package format or the .rpm file format. Once you have downloaded the file, you can install the driver from the terminal.
The driver installer registers the driver with unixODBC and creates a system DSN, which can be used later in any tools or applications that support ODBC connectivity.
For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, run the following command with sudo or as root:
$ dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb
For Red Hat systems or other systems that support .rpms, run the following command with sudo or as root:
$ rpm -i /path/to/package.rpm
Once the driver is installed, you can list the registered drivers and defined data sources using the unixODBC driver manager:
List the Registered Driver(s)
$ odbcinst -q -d
CData ODBC Driver for Certinia
...
List the Defined Data Source(s)
$ odbcinst -q -s
CData Certinia Source
...
To use the CData ODBC Driver for Certinia with unixODBC, ensure that the driver is configured to use UTF-16. To do so, edit the INI file for the driver (cdata.odbc.certinia.ini), which can be found in the lib folder in the installation location (typically /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-certinia), as follows:
cdata.odbc.certinia.ini
...
[Driver]
DriverManagerEncoding = UTF-16
Modifying the DSN
The driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties. Additionally, you can create user-specific DSNs that will not require root access to modify in $HOME/.odbc.ini.
There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Certinia: login credentials, SSO, and OAuth.
Authenticating with a Login and Token
Set the User and Password to your login credentials. Additionally, set the SecurityToken. By default, the SecurityToken is required, but you can make it optional by allowing a range of trusted IP addresses.
To disable the security token:
- Log in to Certinia and enter "Network Access" in the Quick Find box in the setup section.
- Add your IP address to the list of trusted IP addresses.
To obtain the security token:
- Open the personal information page on certinia.com.
- Click the link to reset your security token. The token will be emailed to you.
- Specify the security token in the SecurityToken connection property or append it to the Password.
Authenticating with OAuth
If you do not have access to the user name and password or do not want to require them, use the OAuth user consent flow. See the OAuth section in the Help for an authentication guide.
Connecting to Certinia Sandbox Accounts
Set UseSandbox to true (false by default) to use a Certinia sandbox account. Ensure that you specify a sandbox user name in User.
/etc/odbc.ini or $HOME/.odbc.ini
[CData Certinia Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Certinia
Description = My Description
User = myUser
Password = myPassword
Security Token = myToken
For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).
Establish a Connection
Open the connection to Certinia by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.
$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia Source","user","password");
Connections opened with odbc_connect are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the odbc_pconnect 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.
$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Certinia Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly
Create Prepared Statements
Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the odbc_prepare function.
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Account WHERE Industry = ?");
Execute Queries
Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.
$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Account WHERE Industry = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Floppy Disks'));
Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.
$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT BillingState, Name FROM Account WHERE Industry = 'Floppy Disks'");
Process Results
Access a row in the result set as an array with the odbc_fetch_array function.
$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT BillingState, Name FROM Account WHERE Industry = 'Floppy Disks'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
echo $row["BillingState"] . "\n";
}
Display the result set in an HTML table with the odbc_result_all function.
$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Certinia data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Account WHERE Industry = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Floppy Disks'));
if($success)
odbc_result_all($query);
More Example Queries
You will find complete information on the SQL queries supported by the driver in the help documentation. The code examples above are Certinia-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.
Ready to get started?
Download a free trial of the Certinia ODBC Driver to get started:
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Certinia ODBC Driver
The Certinia ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Certinia, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.
Access Certinia data like you would a database - read, write, and update Certinia Invoices, Expenses, Accounts, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.
