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Connect to FreshBooks Data in Ruby

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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.

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Connect to FreshBooks data in Ruby with ruby-dbi, dbd-odbc, and ruby-odbc.

The CData ODBC Driver for FreshBooks makes it easy to integrate connectivity to live FreshBooks data in Ruby. This article shows how to create a simple Ruby app that connects to FreshBooks data, executes a query, and displays the results.

Create an ODBC Connection to FreshBooks Data

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.

Installing Ruby and Necessary Gems

If you do not have Ruby installed, refer to the Ruby installation page. With Ruby installed, you will need to install the ruby-dbi, dbd-odbc, and ruby-odbc gems:

gem install dbi gem install dbd-odbc gem install ruby-odbc

Create a Ruby App with Connectivity to FreshBooks Data

Create a new Ruby file (for example: FreshBooksSelect.rb) and open it in a text editor. Copy the following code into your file:

#connect to the DSN require 'DBI' cnxn = DBI.connect('DBI:ODBC:CData FreshBooks Source','','') #execute a SELECT query and store the result set resultSet = cnxn.execute("SELECT Username, Credit FROM Clients") #display the names of the columns resultSet.column_names.each do |name| print name, "\t" end puts #display the results while row = resultSet.fetch do (0..resultSet.column_names.size - 1).each do |n| print row[n], "\t" end puts end resultSet.finish #close the connection cnxn.disconnect if cnxn

With the file completed, you are ready to display your FreshBooks data with Ruby. To do so, simply run your file from the command line:

ruby FreshBooksSelect.rb Writing SQL-92 queries to FreshBooks allows you to quickly and easily incorporate FreshBooks data into your own Ruby applications. Download a free trial today!