Work with Live Facebook Data in Power Query

Power Query is a data transformation and data preparation engine. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Facebook data from Power Query. This article shows how to connect to Connect Cloud from Power Query through Microsoft Excel and get live access to Facebook data for transformation and preparation.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Facebook, allowing you to easily integrate with live Facebook data in Power Query — without replicating the data. CData Connect Cloud looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Query and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Facebook, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Facebook data.

Configure Facebook Connectivity for Power Query

Connectivity to Facebook from Power Query is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Facebook data from Power Query, we start by creating and configuring a Facebook connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Facebook" from the Add Connection panel
3. Facebook uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Facebook.
4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Facebook Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Facebook data from Power Query.

Working with Live Facebook Data in Power Query

With the connection to Connect Cloud configured, you are ready to work with live Facebook data in Power Query.

1. In Microsoft Excel, open the Power Query Editor (from the Data ribbon, click Get Data -> Launch Power Query Editor)
2. Click New Source -> SQL Server
3. In the SQL Server database modal:
   • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333
   • (Optional) Set Database to the name of the Facebook connection (e.g. Facebook1 )
4. In the SQL Server credentials modal, select "Database" and
   • Set User to your Connect Cloud username (e.g. user@mydomain.com )
   • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
5. Click Connect
6. Select the table(s) you wish to work with in the Navigator and click "OK"

At this point, you have live access to Facebook data from Power Query for transformation and preparation.

SQL Access to Facebook Data

Now you have a direct connection to live Facebook data from Microsoft Power Query. You can create more connections and transform and preparte your data to better drive business — all without replicating Facebook data.

To get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect Cloud.