LINQ to PhantomBuster Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the PhantomBuster via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for PhantomBuster. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData PhantomBuster Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Using API Key Authentication

   To use the Phantombuster API, you need to obtain an API key from your Phantombuster account settings. Navigate to phantombuster.com, click your profile icon, select Settings, and copy the API key from the API section.

   After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
   • APIKey: Set this to your Phantombuster API key from the account settings page.

   Multi-Organization Accounts

   If your API key is associated with multiple organizations, you can target a specific organization by setting the OrganizationId connection property to the desired organization identifier. When set, it is sent as the X-Phantombuster-Org request header.

   Example connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\Phantombuster.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key_here"
   

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\Phantombuster.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key_here"


5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting APIEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

APIEntities context = new APIEntities();

var agentsQuery = from agents in context.Agents
  select agents;

foreach (var result in agentsQuery) {
  Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.