Pipe Facebook Data to CSV in PowerShell

The CData Cmdlets Module for Facebook is a standard PowerShell module offering straightforward integration with Facebook. Below, you will find examples of using our Facebook Cmdlets with native PowerShell cmdlets.

Creating a Connection to Your Facebook Data

Most tables require user authentication as well as application authentication. Facebook uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate to Facebook, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Facebook.

See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

$conn = Connect-FB 

Selecting Data

Follow the steps below to retrieve data from the Posts table and pipe the result into to a CSV file:

Select-Facebook -Connection $conn -Table Posts | Select -Property * -ExcludeProperty Connection,Table,Columns | Export-Csv -Path c:\myPostsData.csv -NoTypeInformation

You will notice that we piped the results from Select-Facebook into a Select-Object cmdlet and excluded some properties before piping them into an Export-Csv cmdlet. We do this because the CData Cmdlets append Connection, Table, and Columns information onto each "row" in the result set, and we do not necessarily want that information in our CSV file.

Deleting Data

The following line deletes any records that match the criteria:

Select-Facebook -Connection $conn -Table Posts -Where "Target = thesimpsons" | Remove-Facebook

Inserting and Updating Data

The cmdlets make data transformation easy as well as data cleansing. The following example loads data from a CSV file into Facebook, checking first whether a record already exists and needs to be updated instead of inserted.

Import-Csv -Path C:\MyPostsUpdates.csv | %{
  $record = Select-Facebook -Connection $Facebook -Table Posts -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  if($record){
    Update-Facebook -Connection $facebook -Table Posts -Columns ("FromName","LikesCount") -Values ($_.FromName, $_.LikesCount) -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  }else{
    Add-Facebook -Connection $facebook -Table Posts -Columns ("FromName","LikesCount") -Values ($_.FromName, $_.LikesCount)
  }
}

As always, our goal is to simplify the way you connect to data. With cmdlets users can install a data module, set the connection properties, and start building. Download Cmdlets and start working with your data in PowerShell today!