How to Visualize Insightly Data in Python with pandas

The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData API Driver for Python, the pandas & Matplotlib modules, and the SQLAlchemy toolkit, you can build Insightly-connected Python applications and scripts for visualizing Insightly data. This article shows how to use the pandas, SQLAlchemy, and Matplotlib built-in functions to connect to Insightly data, execute queries, and visualize the results.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData Python Connector offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Insightly data in Python. When you issue complex SQL queries from Insightly, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Insightly and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to Insightly Data

Connecting to Insightly data looks just like connecting to any relational data source. Create a connection string using the required connection properties. For this article, you will pass the connection string as a parameter to the create_engine function.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Insightly Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Insightly.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Insightly (see below).

Insightly API Profile Settings

Navigate to your Insightly profile and select User Settings > API to find your API key. The Pod value (e.g.,

na1

) is derived from the subdomain of your API URL.

Follow the procedure below to install the required modules and start accessing Insightly through Python objects.

Install Required Modules

Use the pip utility to install the pandas & Matplotlib modules and the SQLAlchemy toolkit:

pip install pandas
pip install matplotlib
pip install sqlalchemy

Be sure to import the module with the following:

import pandas
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sqlalchemy import create_engine

Visualize Insightly Data in Python

You can now connect with a connection string. Use the create_engine function to create an Engine for working with Insightly data.

engine = create_engine("api:///?Profile=C:\profiles\Insightly.apip&ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key&Pod=na1'")

Execute SQL to Insightly

Use the read_sql function from pandas to execute any SQL statement and store the resultset in a DataFrame.

df = pandas.read_sql("SELECT ActivitysetId, Name FROM ActivitySets WHERE ForContacts = 'true'", engine)

Visualize Insightly Data

With the query results stored in a DataFrame, use the plot function to build a chart to display the Insightly data. The show method displays the chart in a new window.

df.plot(kind="bar", x="ActivitysetId", y="Name")
plt.show()

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData API Driver for Python to start building Python apps and scripts with connectivity to Insightly data. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.

---

Full Source Code

import pandas
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sqlalchemy import create_engin

engine = create_engine("api:///?Profile=C:\profiles\Insightly.apip&ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key&Pod=na1'")
df = pandas.read_sql("SELECT ActivitysetId, Name FROM ActivitySets WHERE ForContacts = 'true'", engine)

df.plot(kind="bar", x="ActivitysetId", y="Name")
plt.show()