Query Asana 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 ODBC Driver for Asana, you can access live Asana 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 Asana data.

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

Connecting to Asana 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.

You can optionally set the following to refine the data returned from Asana.

• WorkspaceId: Set this to the globally unique identifier (gid) associated with your Asana Workspace to only return projects from the specified workspace. To get your workspace id, navigate to https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/workspaces while logged into Asana. This displays a JSON object containing your workspace name and Id.
• ProjectId: Set this to the globally unique identifier (gid) associated with your Asana Project to only return data mapped under the specified project. Project IDs can be found in the URL of your project's Overview page. This will be the numbers directly after /0/.

Connect Using OAuth Authentication

You must use OAuth to authenticate with Asana. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Asana using the browser. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Building node-odbc

In order to connect to Asana 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 Asana from Node.js

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

myscript.js

const odbc = require('odbc');

async function queryAsana() {
 const connection = await odbc.connect(`DSN=CData Asana Source`);
 const data = await connection.query('SELECT Id, WorkspaceId FROM projects');
 console.log(data);
}

queryAsana();

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

node myscript.js

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