Learn more
 

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Printful with the API Driver

Connect to Printful

In this article

Related articles

Analyze Printful Data in R


Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze Printful data in Microsoft R Open.

Access Printful data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Printful and the RODBC package to work with remote Printful data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Printful data and visualize Printful data in R.

Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to Printful as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Printful follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Printful Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Printful.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Printful (see below).

Printful API Profile Settings

In order to authenticate to Printful, you'll need to provide your API Key. To get your API Key, first go to 'Settings' then 'Stores'. Select the Store you would like to connect to, then click the 'Add API Access' button to generate an API Key. Set the API Key in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Windows

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. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Printful in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData API Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Printful Description = My Description Profile = C:\profiles\Printful.apip ProfileSettings = 'APIKey = my_api_key'

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint) checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to Printful Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData API Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Printful APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Printful API.

orders <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Id, Store FROM Orders WHERE Status = 'inprocess'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(orders)

Plot Printful Data

You can now analyze Printful data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2)) barplot(orders$Store, main="Printful Orders", names.arg = orders$Id, horiz=TRUE)