LINQ to Customer.io Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Customer.io via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Customer.io. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through 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 Customer.io Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Using API Key Authentication

   To obtain your Customer.io App API Key, navigate to the Customer.io UI under Data & Integrations > Integrations > Customer.io API and generate your API key.

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

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
   • APIKey: Set this to your Customer.io App API Key.

   Example Connection String

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

   Below is a typical connection string:

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

👁 Required connection properties for the data source. (QuickBooks is shown.)

5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting APIEntities 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 commands. For example:

APIEntities context = new APIEntities();

var customersQuery = from customers in context.Customers
 select customers;

foreach (var result in customersQuery) {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.);
}

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