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

Access BigCommerce data like you would a database - read, write, and update BigCommerce Customers, Products, Orders, Transactions, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Import Real-Time BigCommerce Data in ColdFusion to Build Applications


Use CData ODBC drivers to import and use BigCommerce 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 BigCommerce, you can link your ColdFusion web and mobile applications to operational BigCommerce 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 BigCommerce data from within a ColdFusion markup file.

To follow along with this tutorial, you need to install the CData ODBC Driver for BigCommerce 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.

BigCommerce authentication is based on the standard OAuth flow. To authenticate, you must initially create an app via the Big Commerce developer platform where you can obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL. These three parameters will be set as connection properties to your driver.

Additionally, in order to connect to your BigCommerce Store, you will need your StoreId. To find your Store Id please follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your BigCommerce account.
  2. From the Home Page, select Advanced Settings > API Accounts.
  3. Click Create API Account.
  4. A text box named API Path will appear on your screen.
  5. Inside you can see a URL of the following structure: https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/{Store Id}/v3.
  6. As demonstrated above, your Store Id will be between the 'stores/' and '/v3' path paramters.
  7. Once you have retrieved your Store Id you can either click Cancel or proceed in creating an API Account in case you do not have one already.

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

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

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

          ...

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

          SELECT * FROM Customers 

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

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

          ...

        </cftable> 
        </body> 

        </html>
  6. Finally, run the code in a browser. It produces a table populated with BigCommerce 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 BigCommerce and start building BigCommerce-connected applications with Adobe ColdFusion. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.