How to connect PHP with Microsoft Access database

Question

I am currently faced with a new challenge to develop a site using Microsoft Access as the primary database instead of mysql. I have not used MS Access before and I would lik

Answer 1

If you are just getting started with a new project then I would suggest that you use PDO instead of the old odbc_exec() approach. Here is a simple example:

setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);

$sql = 
        "SELECT AgentName FROM Agents " .
        "WHERE ID < ? AND AgentName <> ?";
$sth = $dbh->prepare($sql);

// query parameter value(s)
$params = array(
        5,
        'Homer'
        );

$sth->execute($params);

while ($row = $sth->fetch()) {
    echo $row['AgentName'] . "\r\n";
}

NOTE: The above approach is sufficient if you do not need to support Unicode characters above U+00FF. If you do need to support such characters then neither PDO_ODBC nor the old odbc_ functions will work; you'll need to use the solution described in this answer.