Excel Spreadsheet Automation on PhantomBuster Data with the QUERY Formula

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Pull data from PhantomBuster, automate spreadsheets, and more with the QUERY formula.

The CData Excel Add-In for PhantomBuster provides formulas that can query PhantomBuster data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search PhantomBuster 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 PhantomBuster data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.
  • Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to PhantomBuster data, separated by semicolons.

    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"
    
  • 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 PhantomBuster data, such as .
  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.
  3. =CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Agents WHERE  = '"&B5&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Provider=API",B6)
  4. Change the filter to change the data.

Ready to get started?

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