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LINQ to Zendesk Data

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Zendesk ADO.NET Provider

Rapidly create and deploy powerful .NET applications that integrate with Zendesk data including Tickets, Groups, Users, Schedules, and more!

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LINQ provides general-purpose query facilities in .NET Framework 3.0 and above and provides one easy way to programmatically access data through from CData ADO.NET Data Providers. This example uses LINQ to access information from the Zendesk Data Provider.

This article demonstrates how to use LINQ to access Zendesk tables through the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Zendesk. To do this you will LINQ to Entity Framework, which is used to generate the connection and can be used with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data via LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

  1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
  2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
  3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Zendesk Data Source".

  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    Connecting to Zendesk

    To connect, set the URL and provide authentication. The URL is your Zendesk Support URL: https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com.

    Authenticating to Zendesk

    You can authenticate using the Basic or OAuth methods.

    Using Basic Authentication

    To use Basic authentication, specify your email address and password or your email address and an API token. Set User to your email address and follow the steps below to provide the Password or ApiToken.

    • Enable password access in the Zendesk Support admin interface at Admin > Channels > API.
    • Manage API tokens in the Zendesk Support Admin interface at Admin > Channels > API. More than one token can be active at the same time. Deleting a token deactivates it permanently.

    Using OAuth Authentication

    See the Getting Started guide in the CData driver documentation for an authentication guide.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    URL=https://subdomain.zendesk.com;User=my@email.com;Password=test123;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting ZendeskEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
  6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

ZendeskEntities context = new ZendeskEntities(); var ticketsQuery = from tickets in context.Tickets select tickets; foreach (var result in ticketsQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Id); }

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.