Query UKG Pro HCM 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 API Driver for ODBC, you can access live UKG Pro HCM 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 UKG Pro HCM data.

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

Connecting to UKG Pro HCM 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.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the UKGProHCM Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\UKGProHCM.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for UKGProHCM (see below).

UKGProHCM API Profile Settings

UKG Pro HCM uses Basic authentication combined with a customer API key to authorize access to the API. To connect, you will need your UKG Pro HCM credentials and a customer API key issued by UKG.

Set the following connection properties to authenticate:

• AuthScheme: Set this to Basic.
• User: Set this to your UKG Pro HCM username.
• Password: Set this to your UKG Pro HCM password.
• ProfileSettings: Set this to a semicolon-separated list containing:
  • Host: Your UKG Pro HCM tenant hostname (e.g., yourcompany.ultipro.com).
  • CustomerAPIKey: Your UKG customer API key. This is passed as the US-CUSTOMER-API-KEY request header on each API call.

To obtain your customer API key, contact your UKG Pro HCM administrator or refer to the UKG Developer Portal at https://developer.ukg.com.

Building node-odbc

In order to connect to UKG Pro HCM 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 UKG Pro HCM from Node.js

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

myscript.js

const odbc = require('odbc');

async function queryAPI() {
    const connection = await odbc.connect(`DSN=CData API Source`);
    const data = await connection.query('SELECT UserId, UserName FROM UserDetails');
    console.log(data);
}

queryAPI();

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

node myscript.js

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