Build API-Connected Visualizations in datapine

datapine is a browser-based business intelligence platform. When paired with the CData Connect Cloud, you get access to your API data directly from your datapine visualizations and dashboards. This article describes connecting to your API in CData Connect Cloud and building a simple your API-connected visualization in datapine.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server interface for your API, allowing you to query data from your API without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to your API, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested API data quickly.

Configure your API Connectivity for datapine

Connectivity to your API from datapine is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with API data from datapine, we start by creating and configuring a your API connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "API" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to your API.

   To connect to your API, configure the following properties on the Global Settings page:

   • In Authentication, select the Type and fill in the required properties
   • In Headers, add the required HTTP headers for your API
   • In Pagination, select the Type and fill in the required properties

   After the configuring the global settings, navigate to the Tables to add tables. For each table you wish to add:

   1. Click "+ Add"
   2. Set the Name for the table
   3. Set Request URL to the API endpoint you wish to work with
   4. (Optional) In Parameters, add the required URL Parameters for your API endpoint
   5. (Optional) In Headers, add the required HTTP headers for the API endpoint
   6. In Table Data click " Configure"
   7. Review the response from the API and click "Next"
   8. Select which element to use as the Repeated Elements and which elements to use as Columns and click "Next"
   9. Preview the tabular model of the API response and click "Confirm"
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add your API Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Connecting to your API from datapine

Once you configure your connection to your API in Connect Cloud, you are ready to connect to your API from datapine.

1. Log into datapine
2. Click Connect to navigate to the "Connect" page
3. Select MS SQL Server as the data source
4. In the Integration step, fill in the connection properties and click "Save and Proceed"
   • Set the Internal Name
   • Set Database Name to the name of the connection we just configured (e.g. API1)
   • Set Host / IP to "tds.cdata.com"
   • Set Username to your Connect Cloud username (e.g. user@mydomain.com)
   • Set Password to the corresponding PAT
   • Set Database Port to "14333"
5. In the Data Schema step, select the tables and fields to visualize and click "Save and Proceed"
6. In the References step, define any relationships between your selected tables and click "Save and Proceed"
7. In the Data Transfer step, click "Go to Analyzer"

Visualize API Data in datapine

After connecting to CData Connect Cloud, you are ready to visualize your API data in datapine. Simply select the dimensions and measures you wish to visualize!

Having connect to your API from datapine, you are now able to visualize and analyze real-time API data no matter where you are. To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from datapine, try CData Connect Cloud today!