Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for PayPal provides formulas that can query PayPal data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search PayPal data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following: =CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the PayPal data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as PayPalConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to PayPal data, separated by semicolons.

  The provider surfaces tables from two PayPal APIs. The APIs use different authentication methods.

  • The REST API uses the OAuth standard. To authenticate to the REST API, you will need to set the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL properties.
  • The Classic API requires Signature API credentials. To authenticate to the Classic API, you will need to obtain an API username, password, and signature.

  See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the necessary API credentials.

  To select the API you want to work with, you can set the Schema property to REST or SOAP. By default the SOAP schema will be used.

  For testing purposes you can set UseSandbox to true and use sandbox credentials.

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search PayPal data, such as TransactionClass.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.
=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Transactions WHERE TransactionClass = '"&B5&"'","Schema="&B1&";Username="&B2&";Password="&B3&";Signature="&B4&";Provider=PayPal",B6)
3. Change the filter to change the data.