Query BambooHR Data through ODBC in Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript code outside of a browser. With the CData API Driver for ODBC, you can access live BambooHR data from Node.js apps and scripts. In this article, we walk through installing node-odbc and the required tools to create a simple Node.js app with access to live BambooHR data.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData ODBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live BambooHR data in Node.js. When you issue complex SQL queries from Node.js to BambooHR, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to BambooHR and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to BambooHR Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the BambooHR Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\bamboohr.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for BambooHR (see below).

BambooHR API Profile Settings

In order to authenticate to BambooHR, you'll need to provide your API Key. To generate an API key, log in and click your name in the upper right-hand corner of any page to get to the user context menu. If you have sufficient permissions, there will be an "API Keys" option in that menu to go to the page, where you can create a new API Key. Additionally, you will need to set the Domain, found in the domain name of your BambooHR account. For example if your BambooHR account is acmeinc.bamboohr.com, then the Domain should be 'acmeinc'. Set both the API Key and Domain in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

Building node-odbc

In order to connect to BambooHR through the CData ODBC Driver, you need to build node-odbc manually (after installing the required tools).

Installing the Required Tools

The following commands install the tools required to build node-odbc (note the -g parameter, which installs the tools globally).

npm i -g windows-build-tools
npm i -g node-gyp

Building node-odbc

After installing the required tools, create a directory for the Node.js app and install odbc (which builds the binary for us to use in our Node.js script).

mkdir nodeodbc
cd nodeodbc
npm i -g node

Querying BambooHR from Node.js

With the ODBC Driver installed, a DSN Configured, and node-odbc built, we are ready to query live BambooHR data from a Node.js app. The sample code below connects to a specific DSN and queries the Employees table.

myscript.js

const odbc = require('odbc');

async function queryAPI() {
    const connection = await odbc.connect(`DSN=CData API Source`);
    const data = await connection.query('SELECT Id, DisplayName FROM Employees');
    console.log(data);
}

queryAPI();

Once you write the app, use node to execute the script:

node myscript.js

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData API Driver for ODBC and start working with your live BambooHR data in Node.js. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.