Create Reports from PayPal Data in Looker Studio

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect Cloud, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to PayPal data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for PayPal and generating reports from PayPal data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect Cloud offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for PayPal, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live PayPal data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to PayPal. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested PayPal data.

Configure PayPal Connectivity for Looker Studio

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

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "PayPal" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to PayPal.

   The provider surfaces tables from two PayPal APIs. The APIs use different authentication methods.

   • The REST API uses the OAuth standard. To authenticate to the REST API, you will need to set the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL properties.
   • The Classic API requires Signature API credentials. To authenticate to the Classic API, you will need to obtain an API username, password, and signature.

   See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the necessary API credentials.

   To select the API you want to work with, you can set the Schema property to REST or SOAP. By default the SOAP schema will be used.

   For testing purposes you can set UseSandbox to true and use sandbox credentials.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add PayPal Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to PayPal data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live PayPal Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Looker Studio to create a new PayPal data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect Cloud Connector.
2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account.
3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect Cloud instance
4. In the CData Connect Cloud Connector in Looker Studio select a Connection (e.g. PayPal1) and click Next
5. Select a Table (e.g. Transactions) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue
6. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
7. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
8. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.

Live Access to PayPal Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live PayPal data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating PayPal data.

Try CData Connect Cloud and get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.