Analyze Yotpo Data in R via JDBC

Access Yotpo data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Yotpo and the RJDBC package to work with remote Yotpo data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Yotpo and visualize Yotpo data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RJDBC)

Connect to Yotpo as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Yotpo as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
• Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for Yotpo:

driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.api.jar", identifier.quote = "'") 

You can now use DBI functions to connect to Yotpo and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

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

Yotpo API Profile Settings

To authenticate to Yotpo, you can use the OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow with your Yotpo AppKey and AppSecret.

To use the Yotpo API, you need a Yotpo store account with an AppKey and AppSecret. You can find these credentials in the Yotpo dashboard under Account Settings > Store.

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

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuthClient.
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to your Yotpo AppKey.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to your Yotpo AppSecret.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Yotpo JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Yotpo.apip;AuthScheme=OAuthClient;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_app_key;OAuthClientSecret=your_app_secret;")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Yotpo APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Yotpo API:

productbottomline <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT TotalReview, AverageScore FROM ProductBottomLine WHERE ExternalProductId = 'my-product-sku'")

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(productbottomline)

Plot Yotpo Data

You can now analyze Yotpo data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(productbottomline$AverageScore, main="Yotpo ProductBottomLine", names.arg = productbottomline$TotalReview, horiz=TRUE)