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Connect to live data from Drift with the API Driver

Connect to Drift

Automate Drift Integration Tasks from PowerShell



Are you in search of a quick and easy way to access Drift data from PowerShell? This article demonstrates how to utilize the Drift Cmdlets for tasks like connecting to Drift data, automating operations, downloading data, and more.

The CData API Driver for ADO.NET is a standard ADO.NET Provider that make it easy to accomplish data cleansing, normalization, backup, and other integration tasks by enabling real-time access to Drift.

ADO.NET Provider

The ADO.NET Provider provides a SQL interface for Drift; this tutorial shows how to use the Provider to retrieve Drift data.

Once you have acquired the necessary connection properties, accessing Drift data in PowerShell can be enabled in three steps.

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

Drift API Profile Settings

Drift uses OAuth-based authentication.

You must first register an application here: https://dev.drift.com. Your app will be assigned a client ID and a client secret. Set these in your connection string via the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret properties. More information on setting up an OAuth application can be found at https://devdocs.drift.com/docs/.

After setting the following options in the ProfileSettings connection property, you are ready to connect:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
  • OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id that is specified in your app settings.
  • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to Client Secret that is specified in your app settings.
  • CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app settings.
  • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.

  1. Load the provider's assembly:

    [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile("C:\Program Files\CData\CData API Driver for ADO.NET\lib\System.Data.CData.API.dll")
  2. Connect to Drift:

    $conn= New-Object System.Data.CData.API.APIConnection("Profile=C:\profiles\Drift.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH") $conn.Open()
  3. Instantiate the APIDataAdapter, execute an SQL query, and output the results:

    $sql="SELECT Id, DisplayName from Contacts" $da= New-Object System.Data.CData.API.APIDataAdapter($sql, $conn) $dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable $da.Fill($dt) $dt.Rows | foreach { Write-Host $_.id $_.displayname }