Create Apps from REST Data in Qlik Sense Cloud

Qlik Sense Cloud allows you to create and share data visualizations and interact with information in new ways. CData Connect Cloud creates a live connection to REST. By pairing Qlik Sense Cloud with CData Connect Cloud, you get true cloud-to-cloud connectivity to all of your SaaS and cloud-based Big Data and NoSQL sources — no need to migrate your data or write your integrations. Simply connect to Connect Cloud from Qlik Sense Cloud and get instant, live access to your REST data.

In this article, we walk through two connections:

1. Connecting to REST in Connect Cloud
2. Connecting to Connect Cloud from Qlik Sense Cloud to create a model and build a simple dashboard

Configure REST Connectivity for Qlik Cloud

Connectivity to REST from Qlik Cloud is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with REST data from Qlik Cloud, we start by creating and configuring a REST connection.

(Optional) Add a New Connect Cloud User

As needed, create Users to connect to REST through Connect Cloud.

1. Navigate to the Users page and click Invite Users
2. Enter the new user's email address and click Send to invite the user
3. You can review and edit users from the Users page

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication to the CData Connect Cloud OData service. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Connect to REST from Connect Cloud

CData Connect Cloud uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "REST" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to REST.

   See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

   After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set Format to "XML" or "JSON" and set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

   The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

   • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
   • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
   • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

   See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

   
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add REST Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection to REST configured, you are ready to connect to REST data from Qlik Sense Cloud.

Create a Qlik Sense App from REST Data

This section walks through adding REST data to a Qlik Sense app for visualizations, analytics, reporting, and more.

Create a New App and Upload Data

1. Log into your Qlik Sense instance and click the button to create a new app
2. Name and configure the new app and click "Create"
3. In the workspace, click to open the new app
4. Click to add data from files and other sources
5. Select the Microsoft SQL Server connector and set the configuration properties.
   • Set Server to tds.cdata.com
   • Set Port to 14333
   • Set Database to the connection you created (e.g. REST1)
   • Set User name to the Connect Cloud user (e.g. [email protected])
   • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
   
6. Select an owner for the connection
7. Select a REST entity (Table) to view
8. Click Next, configure the model, and load the data into Qlik Sense.

Generate Insights or Customize Your App

With the data loaded into Qlik Sense, you are ready to begin discovering insights. You can build custom visualizations, reports, and dashboards engineered to gain actionable insights into your REST data.

More Information & Free Trial

Now, you have created a simple but powerful dashboard from live REST data. For more information on creating OData feeds from REST (and more than 100 other data sources), visit the Connect Cloud page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live REST data in Qlik Sense Cloud.