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The Asana ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Asana, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Asana data like you would a database - read, write, and update Asana Project, Tasks, Teams, Users, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Import Real-Time Asana Data in ColdFusion to Build Applications


Use CData ODBC drivers to import and use Asana data in ColdFusion.

Adobe ColdFusion is a web and mobile application development platform. It uses its own scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), to create data-driven websites as well as generate remote services, such as REST. When ColdFusion is paired with the CData ODBC Driver for Asana, you can link your ColdFusion web and mobile applications to operational Asana data. This allows for your applications to be more robust and complete. This article details how to use the ODBC driver to create a table populated with Asana data from within a ColdFusion markup file.

To follow along with this tutorial, you need to install the CData ODBC Driver for Asana and Adobe ColdFusion.

Configuring the Connection

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 process. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

You can optionally set the following to refine the data returned from Asana.

  • WorkspaceId: Set this to the globally unique identifier (gid) associated with your Asana Workspace to only return projects from the specified workspace. To get your workspace id, navigate to https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/workspaces while logged into Asana. This displays a JSON object containing your workspace name and Id.
  • ProjectId: Set this to the globally unique identifier (gid) associated with your Asana Project to only return data mapped under the specified project. Project IDs can be found in the URL of your project's Overview page. This will be the numbers directly after /0/.

Connect Using OAuth Authentication

You must use OAuth to authenticate with Asana. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Asana using the browser. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Adding a Data Source and Creating a Table

After creating a DSN, follow the steps below to add a new data source, test our connection to it, create a ColdFusion markup file, and, finally, import Asana Asana data and display it in a table in ColdFusion:

  1. From the ColdFusion administrator interface, choose Data & Services.
  2. Here, click "Add New Data Source". The data source name can be any name, provided it conforms to the ColdFusion variable naming conventions. For our ODBC driver, choose "ODBC Socket", then click the "Add" button.
  3. From the ODBC DSN Dropdown menu select CData Asana Sys. Under the Advanced Settings section, leave the Connection String blank. Note that any properties specified in this input field will override the ones specified in the DSN Configuration.
  4. Now, test the connection by pressing the check mark to the left of the CDataAsanaODBC data source you just created. When the data source reports an "OK" status, it is ready for use.
  5. Next, create a new ColdFusion Markup file (.cfm) and place it in the wwwroot directory ("C:\ColdFusion2021\cfusion\wwwroot") for ColdFusion.

    The following code queries the data source: 

                
        <cfquery name="AsanaQuery" dataSource="CDataAsanaODBC"> 
          SELECT * FROM projects 
        </cfquery>
    And a CFTable can be used to quickly output the table in HTML: 
                
          <cftable  
          query = "AsanaQuery" 
          border = "1" 
          colHeaders 
          colSpacing = "2" 
          headerLines = "2" 
          HTMLTable 
          maxRows = "500" 
          startRow = "1"> 

          <cfcol header="<b>Id</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="Id"/> 

          <cfcol header="<b>WorkspaceId</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="WorkspaceId"/> 

          ...

        </cftable>
    Full code, including the HTML portion is available below: 
                
        <html> 
        <head><title>CData Software | Asana projects Table Demo </title></head> 
        <body> 
        <cfoutput>#ucase("Asana projects Table Demo")#</cfoutput> 
        <cfquery name="AsanaQuery" dataSource="CDataAsanaODBC"> 

          SELECT * FROM projects 

        </cfquery> 
        <cftable  
          query = "AsanaQuery" 
          border = "1" 
          colHeaders 
          colSpacing = "2" 
          headerLines = "2" 
          HTMLTable 
          maxRows = "500" 
          startRow = "1"> 
          <cfcol header="<b>Id</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="Id"/> 

          <cfcol header="<b>WorkspaceId</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="WorkspaceId"/> 

          ...

        </cftable> 
        </body> 

        </html>
  6. Finally, run the code in a browser. It produces a table populated with Asana data!

As a note, the CData ODBC Drivers also support parameterized queries using the cfqueryparam element. For example: SELECT * FROM Account WHERE name =

Get Started Today

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for Asana and start building Asana-connected applications with Adobe ColdFusion. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.