在Joomla文章中使用php ODBC函数时出现问题

Question

I am new to Joomla and new to php (wish I was so new in age too). I have installed joomla on a local apache webserver . I am trying to use some php code in a joomla article in order to fetch some data from a Sybase ASE 12.5 database. I installed sourcerer and started to try an ODBC connection using a system DSN (which I verified it is working):

{source}
<?php
echo 'This text is placed through <b>PHP</b>!';
echo '<p>';
echo '</p>';

$conn = odbc_connect('myDSN', 'sa', 'myPassword') or die('Could not connect !');
echo 'Connected successfully';

$sql = 'SELECT day, name FROM my_table where month = 1';

odbc_close($conn);

?>
{/source}

The above code doesn't do much, but this is how far I can get without problems. I refresh the joomla page and I see inside the article's text:

...
This text is placed through PHP!

Connected successfully 
...

Seems ok, the connection obviously established (I verified this by stopping the sybase service and getting the " Could not connect " message). Then I added one more line, just below the $sql assignment.

$rs = odbc_exec($conn,$sql);

I refresh and ...I see nothing coming from the script (not even the "This text is placed through PHP!" ). Obviously, I see nothing if I include code to echo the contents of $rs. I also tried this but in vain.

if (!$rs)
{exit("Error in SQL");}

Once I add the odbc_exec command, the entire script ceases working. In php.ini I read:

; Windows Extensions
; Note that ODBC support is built in, so no dll is needed for it.

Do you have any idea what is going wrong?

• UPDATE

Connecting to a MySQL database using code like this , works like a charm.

Answer 1

To answer your question

Is this the correct way to get data from another database in to an article or should I use some plug-in to do that?

The correct way is to use JDatabase object which you get by JFactory::getDBO() or JDatabase::getInstance() , see Joomla JDatabase documentation .

$db = JDatabase::getInstance( $databasConfigArray );
$db->setQuery('your query');
$data = $db->loadObjectList();

Here is a good tutorial showing how to connect to multiple databases in Joomla , there is even source code for helper class.

Also look at this thread Connecting to 3rd party databse in Joomla!?