How to Build an ETL App for Webex Data in Python with CData

The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData API Driver for Python and the petl framework, you can build Webex-connected applications and pipelines for extracting, transforming, and loading Webex data. This article shows how to connect to Webex with the CData Python Connector and use petl and pandas to extract, transform, and load Webex data.

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

Connecting to Webex Data

Connecting to Webex 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.

To authenticate to Webex, and connect to your own data or to allow other users to connect to their data, you can use the OAuth standard.

Using OAuth Authentication

First, you will need to register an OAuth application with Webex. To do so, navigate to the Webex Developer Portal and create a new integration. Your OAuth application will be assigned a client id and a client secret.

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to the client_id that is specified in your app settings.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client_secret that is specified in your app settings.
• CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI that is specified in your app settings.
• Scope: Set this in ProfileSettings to specify the OAuth scopes requested during authorization. Multiple scopes can be space-separated (e.g. ProfileSettings='Scope=spark:all spark:kms').

Example connection string:

Profile=C:\profiles\Webex.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;ProfileSettings='Scope=your_scopes';

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

Install Required Modules

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

pip install petl
pip install pandas

Build an ETL App for Webex Data in Python

Once the required modules and frameworks are installed, we are ready to build our ETL 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 petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.api as mod

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

cnxn = mod.connect("Profile=C:\profiles\Webex.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;ProfileSettings='Scope=your_scopes';")

Create a SQL Statement to Query Webex

Use SQL to create a statement for querying Webex. In this article, we read data from the AdminAuditEvents entity.

sql = "SELECT ,  FROM AdminAuditEvents WHERE OrgId = 'org123'"

Extract, Transform, and Load the Webex Data

With the query results stored in a DataFrame, we can use petl to extract, transform, and load the Webex data. In this example, we extract Webex data, sort the data by the column, and load the data into a CSV file.

Loading Webex Data into a CSV File

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'')

etl.tocsv(table2,'adminauditevents_data.csv')

With the CData API Driver for Python, you can work with Webex data just like you would with any database, including direct access to data in ETL packages like petl.

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData API Driver for Python to start building Python apps and scripts with connectivity to Webex data. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.

Full Source Code

import petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.api as mod

cnxn = mod.connect("Profile=C:\profiles\Webex.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;ProfileSettings='Scope=your_scopes';")

sql = "SELECT ,  FROM AdminAuditEvents WHERE OrgId = 'org123'"

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'')

etl.tocsv(table2,'adminauditevents_data.csv')