Learn more
 

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the FreshBooks ODBC Driver to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

FreshBooks Icon FreshBooks ODBC Driver

The FreshBooks ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from FreshBooks, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access FreshBooks data like you would a database - read, write, and update FreshBooks Customers, Transactions, Invoices, Sales Receipts, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

In this article

Related articles

Viewing FreshBooks Data in RAD Studio Data Explorer


How to view FreshBooks data in RAD Studio Data Explorer using the CData ODBC Driver for FreshBooks.

Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData ODBC Driver for FreshBooks, you gain access to live FreshBooks data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve and update FreshBooks data. This article will walk through connecting to FreshBooks using the Data Explorer.

Configure a Connection to FreshBooks

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.

To connect to FreshBooks, you can set the CompanyName and Token connection properties. Alternatively, you can use the OAuth authentication standard.

OAuth can be used to enable other users to access their own company data. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret by registering an app. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Connecting to FreshBooks Data Using Data Explorer

You can create a simple application for displaying FreshBooks data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for FreshBooks and a new VCL Forms Application:

  1. Open the Data Explorer in RAD Studio and expand FireDAC.
  2. Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
  3. Click Add New Connection.
  4. Enter a name for the connection.
  5. In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for FreshBooks.
  6. Back in the Data Explorer, expand the tables for the connection.

  7. Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a table (for example: Clients) onto the form.

  8. Select the ClientsTable object on the form and set the Active property to true.

  9. Right-click on the object, bind visually, and link everything (*) to a new control (TStringGrid).

  10. Arrange the TStringGrid on the form and run the application to see the Clients data.