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The Gmail ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live Internet E-mail (Gmail), directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Gmail folders and message data like you would a database - read, write, and send E-mails through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Import Real-Time Gmail Data in ColdFusion to Build Applications


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

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

There are two ways to authenticate to Gmail. Before selecting one, first ensure that you have enabled IMAP access in your Gmail account settings. See the "Connecting to Gmail" section under "Getting Started" in the installed documentation for a guide.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, can be set to valid Gmail user credentials.

Alternatively, instead of providing the Password, you can use the OAuth authentication standard. To access Google APIs on behalf on individual users, you can use the embedded credentials or you can register your own OAuth app.

OAuth also enables you to use a service account to connect on behalf of users in a Google Apps domain. To authenticate with a service account, you will need to register an application to obtain the OAuth JWT values.

In addition to the OAuth values, you will need to provide the User. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

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

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

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

          ...

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

          SELECT * FROM Inbox 

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

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

          ...

        </cftable> 
        </body> 

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