Viewing Hacker News Data in RAD Studio Data Explorer
Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData ODBC Driver for Hacker News, you gain access to live Hacker News data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve Hacker News data. This article will walk through connecting to Hacker News using the Data Explorer.
Configure a Connection to Hacker News
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.
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
Connecting to Hacker News Data Using Data Explorer
You can create a simple application for displaying Hacker News data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for Hacker News and a new VCL Forms Application:
- Open the Data Explorer in RAD Studio and expand FireDAC.
- Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
- Click Add New Connection.
- Enter a name for the connection.
- In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for Hacker News.
- Back in the Data Explorer, expand the views for the connection.
Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a view (for example: TopStories) onto the form.
- Select the TopStoriesView object on the form and set the Active property to true.
Right-click on the object, bind visually, and link everything (*) to a new control (TStringGrid).
Arrange the TStringGrid on the form and run the application to see the TopStories data.
Related Articles
Below you can find other articles for using the CData ODBC Driver with RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++ Builder.