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

With the Twitter ODBC Driver accessing live Tweets, Followers, Messages, Searches, etc. is as easy as querying a database.

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Viewing Twitter Data in RAD Studio Data Explorer


How to view Twitter data in RAD Studio Data Explorer using the CData ODBC Driver for Twitter.

Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData ODBC Driver for Twitter, you gain access to live Twitter data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve and update Twitter data. This article will walk through connecting to Twitter using the Data Explorer.

Configure a Connection to Twitter

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.

All tables require authentication. You can connect using your User and Password or OAuth. To authenticate using OAuth, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can register an app to obtain your own.

If you intend to communicate with Twitter only as the currently authenticated user, then you can obtain the OAuthAccessToken and OAuthAccessTokenSecret directly by registering an app.

See the Getting Started chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Connecting to Twitter Data Using Data Explorer

You can create a simple application for displaying Twitter data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for Twitter and a new VCL Forms Application:

  1. Open the Data Explorer in RAD Studio and expand FireDAC.
  2. Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
  3. Click Add New Connection.
  4. Enter a name for the connection.
  5. In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for Twitter.
  6. Back in the Data Explorer, expand the tables for the connection.

  7. Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a table (for example: Tweets) onto the form.

  8. Select the TweetsTable object on the form and set the Active property to true.

  9. Right-click on the object, bind visually, and link everything (*) to a new control (TStringGrid).

  10. Arrange the TStringGrid on the form and run the application to see the Tweets data.