Replicate Foursquare Data to Multiple Databases via the CData Sync CLI

Always-on applications rely on automatic failover capabilities and real-time access to data. CData Sync for Foursquare integrates live Foursquare data into your mirrored databases, always-on cloud databases, and other databases such as your reporting server: Automatically synchronize with remote Foursquare data from Windows or any machine running Java.

You can use Sync's command-line interface (CLI) to easily control almost all aspects of the replication. You can use the CLI to replicate Foursquare data to one or many databases without any need to change your configuration.

Connect to Foursquare Data

You can save connection strings and other settings like email notifications in XML configuration files.

The following example shows how to replicate to SQLite.

Windows

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CDataSync><DatabaseType>SQLite</DatabaseType>
  <DatabaseProvider>System.Data.SQLite</DatabaseProvider>
  <ConnectionString>Profile=C:\profiles\Foursquare.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_personal_access_token';</ConnectionString>
  <ReplicateAll>False</ReplicateAll>
  <NotificationUserName></NotificationUserName>
  <DatabaseConnectionString>Data Source=C:\my.db</DatabaseConnectionString>
  <TaskSchedulerStartTime>09:51</TaskSchedulerStartTime>
  <TaskSchedulerInterval>Never</TaskSchedulerInterval>
</CDataSync>

Java

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CDataSync><DatabaseType>SQLite</DatabaseType><DatabaseProvider>org.sqlite.JDBC</DatabaseProvider>
<ConnectionString>Profile=C:\profiles\Foursquare.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_personal_access_token';</ConnectionString>
<ReplicateAll>False</ReplicateAll>
<NotificationUserName></NotificationUserName>
<DatabaseConnectionString>Data Source=C:\my.db</DatabaseConnectionString>
</CDataSync>

Using API Key Authentication

Foursquare Places API uses Service Key (Bearer token) authentication. To obtain a Service Key:

1. Go to the Foursquare Developer Console at https://foursquare.com/developers/
2. Create a new project or select an existing one
3. Navigate to the API Keys section
4. Generate a new Service Key for the Places API

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
• ServiceKey: Set this to your Foursquare Service Key obtained from the Developer Console.
• XPlacesApiVersion: (Optional) Set this to the API version date. Defaults to 2025-06-17.

Example APIKey connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Foursquare.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_personal_access_token';

Configure Replication Queries

Sync enables you to control replication with standard SQL. The REPLICATE statement is a high-level command that caches and maintains a table in your database. You can define any SELECT query supported by the Foursquare API. The statement below caches and incrementally updates a table of Foursquare data:

REPLICATE Autocomplete;

You can specify a file containing the replication queries. This enables you to use the same replication queries to replicate to several databases.

Run Sync

After you have configured the connection strings and replication queries, you can run Sync with the following command-line options:

Windows

APISync.exe -g MySQLiteConfig.xml -f APISync.sql

Java

java -Xbootclasspath/p:c:\sqlitejdbc.jar -jar APISync.jar -g MySQLiteConfig.xml -f APISync.sql