Natively Connect to Workday Data in PHP

Create PHP applications on Linux/UNIX machines with connectivity to Workday data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

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

About Workday Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Workday. Customers use CData connectivity to:

Access the tables and datasets you create in Prism Analytics Data Catalog, working with the native Workday data hub without compromising the fidelity of your Workday system.
Access Workday Reports-as-a-Service to surface data from departmental datasets not available from Prism and datasets larger than Prism allows.
Access base data objects with WQL, REST, or SOAP, getting more granular, detailed access but with the potential need for Workday admins or IT to help craft queries.

Users frequently integrate Workday with analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and Excel, and leverage our tools to replicate Workday data to databases or data warehouses. Access is secured at the user level, based on the authenticated user's identity and role.

For more information on configuring Workday to work with CData, refer to our Knowledge Base articles: Comprehensive Workday Connectivity through Workday WQL and Reports-as-a-Service & Workday + CData: Connection & Integration Best Practices.

Getting Started

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 Workday
...

List the Defined Data Source(s)


$ odbcinst -q -s
CData Workday Source
...

To use the CData ODBC Driver for Workday with unixODBC, ensure that the driver is configured to use UTF-16. To do so, edit the INI file for the driver (cdata.odbc.workday.ini), which can be found in the lib folder in the installation location (typically /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-workday), as follows:

cdata.odbc.workday.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.

To connect to Workday, users need to find the Tenant and BaseURL and then select their API type.

Obtaining the BaseURL and Tenant

To obtain the BaseURL and Tenant properties, log into Workday and search for "View API Clients." On this screen, you'll find the Workday REST API Endpoint, a URL that includes both the BaseURL and Tenant.

The format of the REST API Endpoint is: https://domain.com/subdirectories/mycompany, where:

https://domain.com/subdirectories/ is the BaseURL.
mycompany (the portion of the url after the very last slash) is the Tenant.

For example, in the REST API endpoint https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com/ccx/api/v1/mycompany, the BaseURL is https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com and the Tenant is mycompany.

Using ConnectionType to Select the API

The value you use for the ConnectionType property determines which Workday API you use. See our Community Article for more information on Workday connectivity options and best practices.

API	ConnectionType Value
WQL	WQL
Reports as a Service	Reports
REST	REST
SOAP	SOAP

Authentication

Your method of authentication depends on which API you are using.

WQL, Reports as a Service, REST: Use OAuth authentication.
SOAP: Use Basic or OAuth authentication.

See the Help documentation for more information on configuring OAuth with Workday.

/etc/odbc.ini or $HOME/.odbc.ini


[CData Workday Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Workday
Description = My Description
User = myuser
Password = mypassword
Tenant = mycompany_gm1
BaseURL = https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com
ConnectionType = WQL

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 Workday by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Workday 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.


$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Workday Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Workers WHERE Legal_Name_Last_Name = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Workday Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Workers WHERE Legal_Name_Last_Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Morgan'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Workday Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Worker_Reference_WID, Legal_Name_Last_Name FROM Workers WHERE Legal_Name_Last_Name = 'Morgan'");

Process Results

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


$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Workday data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Worker_Reference_WID, Legal_Name_Last_Name FROM Workers WHERE Legal_Name_Last_Name = 'Morgan'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Worker_Reference_WID"] . "\n";
}

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


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

Ready to get started?

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Learn more:

Workday ODBC Driver

The Workday ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Workday, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Workday data like you would a database - read, write, and update Workday Cash Management, Compensation, Financial Management, Payroll, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.