Natively Connect to Salesforce Data in PHP

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

Getting Started

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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.

There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Salesforce: OAuth, Login (or basic), and SSO. The Login method requires you to have the username, password, and security token of the user.

OAuth Authentication (default)

The default authentication mechanism (and the one preferred by Salesforce) is OAuth. To use OAuth with CData's embedded OAuth application, leave the connection properties blank. If you have configured your own custom OAuth application with Salesforce (see the Help documentation for more information), set OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL to the properties for you application. Set InitiateOAuth to the desired OAuth flow ("GETANDREFRESH" will have the connector manage the entire OAuth flow).

Login (or Basic) Authentication

If you do not wish do not wish to use OAuth authentication, you can use Login (or basic) authentication. Set AuthScheme to Basic, and set the User, Password, and SecurityToken properties. You can configure your security token in Salesforce.

SSO (single sign-on) Authentication

SSO (single sign-on) can be used by setting the SSOProperties, SSOLoginUrl, and SSOExchangeURL connection properties, which allow you to authenticate to an identity provider. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for more information.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

If your Salesforce org has MFA enforcement enabled, set MFACode to the time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) generated by your authenticator app (such as Salesforce Authenticator or Google Authenticator). MFACode applies to both OAuth and Login authentication flows.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Salesforce by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Salesforce 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC Salesforce Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($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 Name = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Salesforce Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Account WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('GenePoint'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Salesforce Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Contact.Name, SUM(Account.AnnualRevenue) FROM Contact, Account GROUP BY Contact.Name");
  

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Salesforce data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Contact.Name, SUM(Account.AnnualRevenue) FROM Contact, Account GROUP BY Contact.Name");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Industry"] . "\n";
}

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

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