Replicate FormSite Data from PowerShell



The CData ODBC Driver for FormSite enables out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft's built-in support for ODBC. The ODBC driver instantly integrates connectivity to the real FormSite data with PowerShell.

You can use the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC built into PowerShell to quickly automate integration tasks like replicating FormSite data to other databases. This article shows how to replicate FormSite data to SQL Server in 5 lines of code.

You can also write PowerShell code to download FormSite data. See the examples below.

Create an ODBC Data Source for FormSite

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.

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

FormSite API Profile Settings

Log into your Formsite account and visit the Admin Portal to generate or retrieve your API key. Your

ServerNumber

is the numeric part of your server URL and

UserDirectory

is your account's directory path.

Connect to FormSite

The code below shows how to use the DSN to initialize the connection to FormSite data in PowerShell:

$conn = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection
$conn.ConnectionString = "DSN=CData API Source x64"

Back Up FormSite Data to SQL Server

After you enable caching, you can use the code below to replicate data to SQL Server.

Set the following connection properties to configure the caching database:

• CacheProvider: The name of the ADO.NET provider. This can be found in the Machine.config for your version of .NET. For example, to configure SQL Server, enter System.Data.SqlClient.

• CacheConnection: The connection string of properties required to connect to the database. Below is an example for SQL Server:

  Server=localhost;Database=RSB;User Id=sqltest;Password=sqltest;

The SQL query in the example can be used to refresh the entire cached table, including its schema. Any already existing cache is deleted.

$conn.Open()
# Create and execute the SQL Query
$SQL = "CACHE DROP EXISTING SELECT * FROM " + $FormItems
$cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand($sql,$conn)
$count = $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
$conn.Close()

The driver gives you complete control over the caching functionality. See the help documentation for more caching commands and usage examples. See the help documentation for steps to replicate to other databases.

Other Operations

To retrieve FormSite data in PowerShell, call the Fill method of the OdbcDataAdapter method. To execute data manipulation commands, initialize the OdbcCommand object and then call ExecuteNonQuery. Below are some more examples commands to FormSite through the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC:

Retrieve FormSite Data

$sql="SELECT Id, Label from FormItems"
 
$da= New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcDataAdapter($sql, $conn)
$dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable
$da.Fill($dt) 
 
$dt.Rows | foreach {
  $dt.Columns | foreach ($col in dt{
    Write-Host $1[$_]
  }
}