Query ServiceNow Data through ODBC in Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript code outside of a browser. With the CData ODBC Driver for ServiceNow, you can access live ServiceNow data from Node.js apps and scripts. In this article, we walk through installing node-odbc and the required tools to create a simple Node.js app with access to live ServiceNow data.

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

Connecting to ServiceNow Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

ServiceNow uses the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to register an OAuth app with ServiceNow to obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret connection properties. In addition to the OAuth values, you will need to specify the Instance, Username, and Password connection properties.

See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide on connecting to ServiceNow.

Building node-odbc

In order to connect to ServiceNow through the CData ODBC Driver, you need to build node-odbc manually (after installing the required tools).

Installing the Required Tools

The following commands install the tools required to build node-odbc (note the -g parameter, which installs the tools globally).

npm i -g windows-build-tools
npm i -g node-gyp

Building node-odbc

After installing the required tools, create a directory for the Node.js app and install odbc (which builds the binary for us to use in our Node.js script).

mkdir nodeodbc
cd nodeodbc
npm i -g node

Querying ServiceNow from Node.js

With the ODBC Driver installed, a DSN Configured, and node-odbc built, we are ready to query live ServiceNow data from a Node.js app. The sample code below connects to a specific DSN and queries the incident table.

myscript.js

const odbc = require('odbc');

async function queryServiceNow() {
    const connection = await odbc.connect(`DSN=CData ServiceNow Source`);
    const data = await connection.query('SELECT sys_id, priority FROM incident');
    console.log(data);
}

queryServiceNow();

Once you write the app, use node to execute the script:

node myscript.js

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for ServiceNow and start working with your live ServiceNow data in Node.js. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.