PowerShell Scripting to Replicate BambooHR Data to MySQL

The CData Cmdlets for BambooHR offer live access to BambooHR data from within PowerShell. Using PowerShell scripts, you can easily automate regular tasks like data replication. This article will walk through using the CData Cmdlets for BambooHR and the CData Cmdlets for MySQL in PowerShell to replicate BambooHR data to a MySQL database.

After obtaining the needed connection properties, accessing BambooHR data in PowerShell and preparing for replication consists of four basic steps.

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

BambooHR API Profile Settings

In order to authenticate to BambooHR, you'll need to provide your API Key. To generate an API key, log in and click your name in the upper right-hand corner of any page to get to the user context menu. If you have sufficient permissions, there will be an "API Keys" option in that menu to go to the page, where you can create a new API Key. Additionally, you will need to set the Domain, found in the domain name of your BambooHR account. For example if your BambooHR account is acmeinc.bamboohr.com, then the Domain should be 'acmeinc'. Set both the API Key and Domain in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

Collecting BambooHR Data

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module APICmdlets

2. Connect to BambooHR:

   $api = Connect-API -Profile $Profile -ProfileSettings $ProfileSettings -APIKey $APIKey

3. Retrieve the data from a specific resource:

   $data = Select-API -Connection $api -Table "Employees"

   You can also use the Invoke-API cmdlet to execute pure SQL-92 statements:

   $data = Invoke-API -Connection $api -Query 'SELECT * FROM Employees WHERE Department = @Department' -Params @{'@Department'='Sales'}

4. Save a list of the column names from the returned data.

   $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name

Inserting BambooHR Data into the MySQL Database

With the data and column names collected, you are ready to replicate the data into a MySQL database.

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module MySQLCmdlets

2. Connect to MySQL, using the server address and port of the MySQL server, valid user credentials, and a specific database with the table in which the data will be replicated:

   $mysql = Connect-MySQL -User $User -Password $Password -Database $Database -Server $Server -Port $Port

3. Loop through the BambooHR data, store the values, and use the Add-MySQL cmdlet to insert the data into the MySQL database, one row at a time. In this example, the table will need to have the same name as the BambooHR resource (Employees) and to exist in the database.

   $data | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "Employees" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

You have now replicated your BambooHR data to a MySQL database. This gives you freedom to work with BambooHR data in the same way that you work with other MySQL tables, whether that is performing analytics, building reports, or other business functions.

Notes

• Once you have connected to BambooHR and MySQL in PowerShell, you can pipe command results to perform the replication in a single line:

  Select-API -Connection $api -Table "Employees" | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "Employees" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

• If you wish to replicate the BambooHR data to another database using another PowerShell module, you will want to exclude the Columns, Connection, and Table columns from the data returned by the Select-API cmdlet since those columns are used to help pipe data from one CData cmdlet to another:

  $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name | ? {$_ -NotIn @('Columns','Connection','Table')}