Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Pinterest provides formulas that can query Pinterest data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Pinterest 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 Pinterest data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as PinterestConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Pinterest data, separated by semicolons.

  Pinterest authentication is based on the standard OAuth flow. To authenticate, you must initially create an app via the Pinterest developer platform where you can obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL.

  Set InitiateOAuth to GETANDREFRESH and set OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL based on the property values for the app you created.

  See the Help documentation for other OAuth authentication flows.

• 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 Pinterest data, such as FirstName.
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 Users WHERE FirstName = '"&B4&"'","OAuthClientId="&B1&";OAuthClientSecret="&B2&";CallbackURL="&B3&";Provider=Pinterest",B5)
3. Change the filter to change the data.