Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in Ruby

The CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central makes it easy to integrate connectivity to live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Ruby. This article shows how to create a simple Ruby app that connects to Dynamics 365 Business Central data, executes a query, and displays the results.

Create an ODBC Connection to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must select an AuthScheme and provide the required properties (OAuth by default).

All Methods

Specify the . If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the to indicate which company you would like to connect to. does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

Access Key

To authenticate with an Access Key, set AuthScheme to "AccessKey" and provide the and properties.

To obtain the and values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the and connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

If you wish to authenticate through other methods, refer to the Help documentation.

Installing Ruby and Necessary Gems

If you do not have Ruby installed, refer to the Ruby installation page. With Ruby installed, you will need to install the ruby-dbi, dbd-odbc, and ruby-odbc gems:

gem install dbi
gem install dbd-odbc
gem install ruby-odbc

Create a Ruby App with Connectivity to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

Create a new Ruby file (for example: D365BusinessCentralSelect.rb) and open it in a text editor. Copy the following code into your file:

#connect to the DSN
require 'dbi'
cnxn = DBI.connect('DBI:ODBC:CData D365BusinessCentral Source','','')

#execute a SELECT query and store the result set
resultSet = cnxn.execute("SELECT accountid, Name FROM Accounts")

#display the names of the columns
resultSet.column_names.each do |name|
 print name, "\t"
end
puts

#display the results
while row = resultSet.fetch do
 (0..resultSet.column_names.size - 1).each do |n|
 print row[n], "\t"
 end
 puts
end
resultSet.finish

#close the connection
cnxn.disconnect if cnxn

With the file completed, you are ready to display your Dynamics 365 Business Central data with Ruby. To do so, simply run your file from the command line:

ruby D365BusinessCentralSelect.rb

Writing SQL-92 queries to Dynamics 365 Business Central allows you to quickly and easily incorporate Dynamics 365 Business Central data into your own Ruby applications. Download a free trial today!