Analyze JSON Services in Infragistics Reveal

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

Connect to JSON 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 "JSON"
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to JSON.

   See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models JSON APIs as bidirectional database tables and JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

   After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

   The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

   • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your JSON data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
   • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
   • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

   See the Modeling JSON Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

   

Add JSON Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to JSON, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for JSON services.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
2. Select the JSON 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 JSON from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the JSON 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 JSON services 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 JSON services. For more information on creating OData feeds from JSON (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live JSON services in tools that consume OData APIs.