Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Bright Data Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Bright Data provides formulas that can query Bright Data data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Bright Data data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following:

=CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the Bright Data data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Bright Data data, separated by semicolons.

  Using API Key Authentication

  To use the Bright Data API, you need an API key from the Bright Data Control Panel. Navigate to Account Settings > API to generate or retrieve your API key.

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

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to your Bright Data API key from the Control Panel.

  Example connection string:

  Profile=C:\profiles\BrightData.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key"
  

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search Bright Data data, such as .
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.

=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM AccountStatus WHERE = '"&B5&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Provider=API",B6)

👁 Formula inputs used in this example. (Google Apps is shown.)

3. Change the filter to change the data. 👁 The outputs of the formula. (Google Apps is shown.)