Query Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet, you can access live Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet data.

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

Connecting to Smartsheet 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.

Smartsheet uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to register an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

However, for testing purposes you can instead use the Personal Access Token you get when you create an application; set this to the OAuthAccessToken connection property.

Building node-odbc

In order to connect to Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet from Node.js

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

myscript.js

const odbc = require('odbc');

async function querySmartsheet() {
    const connection = await odbc.connect(`DSN=CData Smartsheet Source`);
    const data = await connection.query('SELECT TaskName, Progress FROM Sheet_Event_Plan_Budget');
    console.log(data);
}

querySmartsheet();

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 Smartsheet and start working with your live Smartsheet data in Node.js. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.