PowerShell Scripting to Replicate TaxJar Data to MySQL

The CData Cmdlets for TaxJar offer live access to TaxJar data from within PowerShell. Using PowerShell scripts, you can easily automate regular tasks like data replication. This article will walk through using the CData Cmdlets for TaxJar and the CData Cmdlets for MySQL in PowerShell to replicate TaxJar data to a MySQL database.

After obtaining the needed connection properties, accessing TaxJar data in PowerShell and preparing for replication consists of four basic steps.

To authenticate to the TaxJar API, you will need to first obtain the API Key from the TaxJar UI.

NOTE: the API is available only for Professional and Premium TaxJar plans.

If you already have a Professional or Premium plan you can find the API Key by logging in the TaxJar UI and navigating to Account -> TaxJar API. After obtaining the API Key, you can set it in the APIKey connection property.

Additional Notes

• By default, the CData connector will retrieve data of the last 3 months in cases where the entity support date range filtering. You can set StartDate to specify the minimum creation date of the data retrieved.
• If the API Key has been created for a sandbox API account please set UseSandbox to true, but not all endpoints will work as expected. For more information, refer to the TaxJar developer documentation.

Collecting TaxJar Data

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module TaxJarCmdlets

2. Connect to TaxJar:

   $taxjar = Connect-TaxJar -APIKey $APIKey

3. Retrieve the data from a specific resource:

   $data = Select-TaxJar -Connection $taxjar -Table "Orders"

   You can also use the Invoke-TaxJar cmdlet to execute pure SQL-92 statements:

   $data = Invoke-TaxJar -Connection $taxjar -Query 'SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE TransactionID = @TransactionID' -Params @{'@TransactionID'='123'}

4. Save a list of the column names from the returned data.

   $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name

Inserting TaxJar Data into the MySQL Database

With the data and column names collected, you are ready to replicate the data into a MySQL database.

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module MySQLCmdlets

2. Connect to MySQL, using the server address and port of the MySQL server, valid user credentials, and a specific database with the table in which the data will be replicated:

   $mysql = Connect-MySQL -User $User -Password $Password -Database $Database -Server $Server -Port $Port

3. Loop through the TaxJar data, store the values, and use the Add-MySQL cmdlet to insert the data into the MySQL database, one row at a time. In this example, the table will need to have the same name as the TaxJar resource (Orders) and to exist in the database.

   $data | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "Orders" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

You have now replicated your TaxJar data to a MySQL database. This gives you freedom to work with TaxJar data in the same way that you work with other MySQL tables, whether that is performing analytics, building reports, or other business functions.

Notes

• Once you have connected to TaxJar and MySQL in PowerShell, you can pipe command results to perform the replication in a single line:

  Select-TaxJar -Connection $taxjar -Table "Orders" | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "Orders" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

• If you wish to replicate the TaxJar data to another database using another PowerShell module, you will want to exclude the Columns, Connection, and Table columns from the data returned by the Select-TaxJar cmdlet since those columns are used to help pipe data from one CData cmdlet to another:

  $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name | ? {$_ -NotIn @('Columns','Connection','Table')}