PowerShell Scripting to Replicate Facebook Data to MySQL

The CData Cmdlets for Facebook offer live access to Facebook 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 Facebook and the CData Cmdlets for MySQL in PowerShell to replicate Facebook data to a MySQL database.

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

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.

Collecting Facebook Data

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module FacebookCmdlets

2. Connect to Facebook:

   $facebook = Connect-FB

3. Retrieve the data from a specific resource:

   $data = Select-FB -Connection $facebook -Table "Posts"

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

   $data = Invoke-FB -Connection $facebook -Query 'SELECT * FROM Posts WHERE Target = @Target' -Params @{'@Target'='thesimpsons'}

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

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

Inserting Facebook 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 Facebook 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 Facebook resource (Posts) and to exist in the database.

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

You have now replicated your Facebook data to a MySQL database. This gives you freedom to work with Facebook 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 Facebook and MySQL in PowerShell, you can pipe command results to perform the replication in a single line:

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

• If you wish to replicate the Facebook 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-FB 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')}