Create Reports from API Data in Looker Studio

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to API data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for your API and generating reports from API data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for your API, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live API data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to your API. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested API data.

Configure your API Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to your API from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with API data from Looker Studio, we start by creating and configuring a your API connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "API" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to your API.

   To connect to your API, configure the following properties on the Global Settings page:

   • In Authentication, select the Type and fill in the required properties
   • In Headers, add the required HTTP headers for your API
   • In Pagination, select the Type and fill in the required properties

   After the configuring the global settings, navigate to the Tables to add tables. For each table you wish to add:

   1. Click "+ Add"
   2. Set the Name for the table
   3. Set Request URL to the API endpoint you wish to work with 👁 Setting the Request URL (Harvest is shown)
      
   4. (Optional) In Parameters, add the required URL Parameters for your API endpoint
   5. (Optional) In Headers, add the required HTTP headers for the API endpoint
   6. In Table Data click " Configure"
   7. Review the response from the API and click "Next" 👁 Reviewing the API response (Harvest is shown)
      
   8. Select which element to use as the Repeated Elements and which elements to use as Columns and click "Next" 👁 Configuring the schema based on the API response(Harvest is shown)
      
   9. Preview the tabular model of the API response and click "Confirm" 👁 Previewing the tabular model of the API response (Harvest is shown)
      
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add your API Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to API data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live API Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new your API data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.
👁 Create a new connection in Looker Studio

2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account. 👁 Granting permissions to the Connector
   
3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authenticating with CData Connect AI
   
4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next
👁 Importing from Connections

5. Now select a Connection (e.g. API1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
   
6. Select a Table (e.g. posts) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue 👁 Selecting a Table
   
7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
👁 Configuring column definitions

8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.
👁 Visualizing API data in Looker Studio

Live Access to API Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live API data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating API data.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.