Analyze Hacker News Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live Hacker News data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Hacker News, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Hacker News in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to Hacker News from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection
2. Select "Hacker News"
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Hacker News.

   Connecting to HackerNews

   The HackerNews API (powered by Firebase) is a public API that requires no authentication. You can connect and query data immediately without any credentials.

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

   • AuthScheme: Set this to None.

   Example connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None
   

   

Add Hacker News Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Hacker News, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Hacker News data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
2. Select the Hacker News connection
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Hacker News from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the Hacker News Connection and Resource(s)

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Hacker News data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize
6. Select fields and choose a chart type

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Hacker News data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Hacker News (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Hacker News data in tools that consume OData APIs.