Use Dash to Build to Web Apps on Salesforce Marketing Data

The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData Python Connector for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the pandas module, and the Dash framework, you can build Salesforce Marketing-connected web applications for Salesforce Marketing data. This article shows how to connect to Salesforce Marketing with the CData Connector and use pandas and Dash to build a simple web app for visualizing Salesforce Marketing data.

With built-in, optimized data processing, the CData Python Connector offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Salesforce Marketing data in Python. When you issue complex SQL queries from Salesforce Marketing, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Salesforce Marketing and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to Salesforce Marketing Data

Connecting to Salesforce Marketing data looks just like connecting to any relational data source. Create a connection string using the required connection properties. For this article, you will pass the connection string as a parameter to the create_engine function.

Authenticating to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

Set the User and Password to your login credentials, or to the credentials for a sandbox user if you are connecting to a sandbox account.

Connecting to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

By default, the data provider connects to production environments. Set UseSandbox to true to use a Salesforce Marketing Cloud sandbox account.

The default Instance is s7 of the Web Services API; however, if you use a different instance, you can set Instance.

After installing the CData Salesforce Marketing Connector, follow the procedure below to install the other required modules and start accessing Salesforce Marketing through Python objects.

Install Required Modules

Use the pip utility to install the required modules and frameworks:

pip install pandas
pip install dash
pip install dash-daq

Visualize Salesforce Marketing Data in Python

Once the required modules and frameworks are installed, we are ready to build our web app. Code snippets follow, but the full source code is available at the end of the article.

First, be sure to import the modules (including the CData Connector) with the following:

import os
import dash
import dash_core_components as dcc
import dash_html_components as html
import pandas as pd
import cdata.sfmarketingcloud as mod
import plotly.graph_objs as go

You can now connect with a connection string. Use the connect function for the CData Salesforce Marketing Connector to create a connection for working with Salesforce Marketing data.

cnxn = mod.connect("User=myUser;Password=myPassword;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthSettingsLocation=/PATH/TO/OAuthSettings.txt")")

Execute SQL to Salesforce Marketing

Use the read_sql function from pandas to execute any SQL statement and store the result set in a DataFrame.

df = pd.read_sql("SELECT Id, Status FROM Subscriber WHERE EmailAddress = 'john.doe@example.com'", cnxn)

Configure the Web App

With the query results stored in a DataFrame, we can begin configuring the web app, assigning a name, stylesheet, and title.

app_name = 'dash-sfmarketingcloudedataplot'

external_stylesheets = ['https://codepen.io/chriddyp/pen/bWLwgP.css']

app = dash.Dash(__name__, external_stylesheets=external_stylesheets)
app.title = 'CData + Dash'

Configure the Layout

The next step is to create a bar graph based on our Salesforce Marketing data and configure the app layout.

trace = go.Bar(x=df.Id, y=df.Status, name='Id')

app.layout = html.Div(children=[html.H1("CData Extension + Dash", style={'textAlign': 'center'}),
	dcc.Graph(
		id='example-graph',
		figure={
			'data': [trace],
			'layout':
			go.Layout(title='Salesforce Marketing Subscriber Data', barmode='stack')
		})
], className="container")

Set the App to Run

With the connection, app, and layout configured, we are ready to run the app. The last lines of Python code follow.

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run_server(debug=True)

Now, use Python to run the web app and a browser to view the Salesforce Marketing data.

python sfmarketingcloud-dash.py

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData Python Connector for Salesforce Marketing Cloud to start building Python apps with connectivity to Salesforce Marketing data. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.

Full Source Code

import os
import dash
import dash_core_components as dcc
import dash_html_components as html
import pandas as pd
import cdata.sfmarketingcloud as mod
import plotly.graph_objs as go

cnxn = mod.connect("User=myUser;Password=myPassword;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthSettingsLocation=/PATH/TO/OAuthSettings.txt")

df = pd.read_sql("SELECT Id, Status FROM Subscriber WHERE EmailAddress = 'john.doe@example.com'", cnxn)
app_name = 'dash-sfmarketingclouddataplot'

external_stylesheets = ['https://codepen.io/chriddyp/pen/bWLwgP.css']

app = dash.Dash(__name__, external_stylesheets=external_stylesheets)
app.title = 'CData + Dash'
trace = go.Bar(x=df.Id, y=df.Status, name='Id')

app.layout = html.Div(children=[html.H1("CData Extension + Dash", style={'textAlign': 'center'}),
	dcc.Graph(
		id='example-graph',
		figure={
			'data': [trace],
			'layout':
			go.Layout(title='Salesforce Marketing Subscriber Data', barmode='stack')
		})
], className="container")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run_server(debug=True)