Analyze PDFMonkey Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live PDFMonkey data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for PDFMonkey, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to PDFMonkey in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to PDFMonkey from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection
2. Select "PDFMonkey"
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to PDFMonkey.

   Using API Key Authentication

   PdfMonkey uses API key authentication. To obtain an API key:

   1. Log in to your PdfMonkey account at https://app.pdfmonkey.io
   2. Navigate to your account settings
   3. Open the API Key page
   4. Copy your API key

   After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
   Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:
   • APIKey: Set this to your PdfMonkey API key.

   Example Connection String

   Profile=C:\profiles\PdfMonkey.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key"
   

   Connecting to PdfMonkey

   Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to PdfMonkey and query data from any of the available tables such as CurrentUser, DocumentCards, Documents, DocumentTemplateCards, and DocumentTemplates.

   

Add PDFMonkey Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to PDFMonkey, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for PDFMonkey data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
2. Select the PDFMonkey connection
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to PDFMonkey from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the PDFMonkey Connection and Resource(s)

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize PDFMonkey data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize
6. Select fields and choose a chart type

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live PDFMonkey data. For more information on creating OData feeds from PDFMonkey (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live PDFMonkey data in tools that consume OData APIs.