Viewing MailChimp 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 MailChimp, you gain access to live MailChimp data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve and update MailChimp data. This article will walk through connecting to MailChimp using the Data Explorer.

Configure a Connection to MailChimp

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.

You can set the APIKey to the key you generate in your account settings, or, instead of providing your APIKey, you can use the OAuth standard to authenticate the application. OAuth can be used to enable other users to access their own data. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL by registering an app with MailChimp.

See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Connecting to MailChimp Data Using Data Explorer

You can create a simple application for displaying MailChimp data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for MailChimp and a new VCL Forms Application:

1. Open the Data Explorer in RAD Studio and expand FireDAC.
2. Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
3. Click Add New Connection.
4. Enter a name for the connection.
5. In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for MailChimp.
6. Back in the Data Explorer, expand the tables for the connection.

7. Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a table (for example: Lists) onto the form.

8. Select the ListsTable object on the form and set the Active property to true.

9. Right-click on the object, bind visually, and link everything (*) to a new control (TStringGrid).

10. Arrange the TStringGrid on the form and run the application to see the Lists data.

Related Articles

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

• DataBind Controls to MailChimp Data in C++Builder
• DataBind Controls to MailChimp Data in Delphi
• Build a Simple VCL Application for MailChimp Data