Viewing Hugging Face 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 Hugging Face, you gain access to live Hugging Face data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve Hugging Face data. This article will walk through connecting to Hugging Face using the Data Explorer.
Configure a Connection to Hugging Face
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.
HuggingFace Hub uses token-based authentication to enable access to its API. The API provides access to machine learning models, datasets, spaces, papers, and other resources on the HuggingFace Hub platform.
Using API Key Authentication
To authenticate to HuggingFace Hub, you will need to provide an API Key (Access Token). To obtain your access token:
- Log in to your HuggingFace account at https://huggingface.co
- Navigate to Settings > Access Tokens
- Click "New token" to create a new access token
- Select the appropriate permissions (read or write)
- Copy the token value
After obtaining your access token, set the following connection properties:
- AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
- APIKey: Set this to your HuggingFace access token.
Example connection string
Profile=C:\profiles\HuggingFace.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=hf_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
Connecting to Hugging Face Data Using Data Explorer
You can create a simple application for displaying Hugging Face data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for Hugging Face 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 Hugging Face.

- Back in the Data Explorer, expand the views for the connection.
Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a view (for example: Collections) onto the form.

- Select the CollectionsView 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 Collections data.

Related Articles
Below you can find other articles for using the CData ODBC Driver with RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++ Builder.