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Natively Connect to CSV Data in PHP


The CData ODBC driver for CSV enables you to create PHP applications with connectivity to CSV data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for CSV into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build CSV-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to CSV 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 DataSource property must be set to a valid local folder name.

Also, specify the IncludeFiles property to work with text files having extensions that differ from .csv, .tab, or .txt. Specify multiple file extensions in a comma-separated list. You can also set Extended Properties compatible with the Microsoft Jet OLE DB 4.0 driver. Alternatively, you can provide the format of text files in a Schema.ini file.

Set UseRowNumbers to true if you are deleting or updating in CSV. This will create a new column with the name RowNumber which will be used as key for that table.

Establish a Connection

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC CSV 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.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC CSV Source","user","password"); ... odbc_close($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 Customer WHERE FirstName = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC CSV Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('Bob'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC CSV Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT City, SUM(TotalDue) FROM Customer GROUP BY City");

Process Results

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

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC CSV data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT City, SUM(TotalDue) FROM Customer GROUP BY City"); while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){ echo $row["City"] . "\n"; }

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

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

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CSV/TSV Files Icon CSV ODBC Driver

The CSV ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live flat-file delimited data (CSV/TSV files), directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access flat-file data like you would any standard database - read, write, and update etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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