Send request for bank transactions using Open Financial Exchange (ofx) with PHP

Question

I want to learn how to download bank transactions using the Open Financial Exchange (ofx) file format. I would like to send the request from my website using PHP.

I have not found any PHP examples of using the ofx file format to send a request to connect to a bank in order to download bank transactions. I have only been able to find examples of parsing the data returned.

I have found websites like www.ofxhome.com that provide URLs (and other bank information) to connect to banks. But I do not know how to send a request to the bank using the ofx file format.

For example, using the information from this ofxhome.com link... http://www.ofxhome.com/index.php/institution/view/472 How can I send a request to the bank using the ofx format and PHP? And how to I save the ofx file returned so I may parse and use the information returned?

Many thanks for your help!

UPDATE: I found a working example. It is exactly what I was looking for, ofx request using PHP. Here is a link: http://www.ofxhome.com/ofxforum/viewtopic.php?id=47419

Answer 1

According to the OFX API documentation (http://www.ofxhome.com//api.txt) they use XML.

You may want to research the following:

• cURL to grab the data from the API http://php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php
• SimpleXML to parse the data returned http://php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php
• Here's a tutorial on parsing XML http://www.sitepoint.com/parsing-xml-with-simplexml/

In your program, the first step would probably would be grabbing the index of all institutions (view source):

http://www.ofxhome.com/api.php?all=yes

Then referencing the ID values from step 1 in a lookup query for a specific institution:

http://www.ofxhome.com/api.php?lookup=424