We are proud to share our inclusion in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. We believe this recognition reflects the differentiated business outcomes CData delivers to our customers.
Get the Report →How to pipe Facebook Data to CSV in PowerShell
Use standard PowerShell cmdlets to access Facebook tables.
The CData Cmdlets Module for Facebook is a standard PowerShell module offering straightforward integration with Facebook. Below, you will find examples of using our Facebook Cmdlets with native PowerShell cmdlets.
Creating a Connection to Your Facebook Data
Most tables require user authentication as well as application authentication. Facebook uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate to Facebook, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Facebook.
See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.
$conn = Connect-FB
Selecting Data
Follow the steps below to retrieve data from the Posts table and pipe the result into to a CSV file:
Select-Facebook -Connection $conn -Table Posts | Select -Property * -ExcludeProperty Connection,Table,Columns | Export-Csv -Path c:\myPostsData.csv -NoTypeInformation
You will notice that we piped the results from Select-Facebook into a Select-Object cmdlet and excluded some properties before piping them into an Export-Csv cmdlet. We do this because the CData Cmdlets append Connection, Table, and Columns information onto each "row" in the result set, and we do not necessarily want that information in our CSV file.
The Connection, Table, and Columns are appended to the results in order to facilitate piping results from one of the CData Cmdlets directly into another one.Deleting Data
The following line deletes any records that match the criteria:
Select-Facebook -Connection $conn -Table Posts -Where "Target = thesimpsons" | Remove-Facebook
Inserting and Updating Data
The cmdlets make data transformation easy as well as data cleansing. The following example loads data from a CSV file into Facebook, checking first whether a record already exists and needs to be updated instead of inserted.
Import-Csv -Path C:\MyPostsUpdates.csv | %{ $record = Select-Facebook -Connection $Facebook -Table Posts -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'") if($record){ Update-Facebook -Connection $facebook -Table Posts -Columns ("FromName","LikesCount") -Values ($_.FromName, $_.LikesCount) -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'") }else{ Add-Facebook -Connection $facebook -Table Posts -Columns ("FromName","LikesCount") -Values ($_.FromName, $_.LikesCount) } }
As always, our goal is to simplify the way you connect to data. With cmdlets users can install a data module, set the connection properties, and start building. Download Cmdlets and start working with your data in PowerShell today!