Analyze Drift Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server and Drift ADO.NET Provider to build dynamic dashboards from live Drift data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Drift, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Drift in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to Drift from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection
2. Select "Drift"
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Drift.

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

   Drift API Profile Settings

   Drift uses OAuth-based authentication.

   You must first register an application here: https://dev.drift.com. Your app will be assigned a client ID and a client secret. Set these in your connection string via the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret properties. More information on setting up an OAuth application can be found at https://devdocs.drift.com/docs/.

   After setting the following options in the ProfileSettings connection property, you are ready to connect:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
   • OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id that is specified in your app settings.
   • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to Client Secret that is specified in your app settings.
   • CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app settings.
   • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.
   

Add Drift Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Drift, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Drift data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
2. Select the Drift connection
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Drift from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the Drift Connection and Resource(s)

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Drift data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize
6. Select fields and choose a chart type

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Drift data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Drift (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Drift data in tools that consume OData APIs.