Excel Spreadsheet Automation on eBay Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for eBay provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete eBay data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search eBay 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 eBay data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as EbayConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to eBay data, separated by semicolons.

  If you will be accessing your own account, you can generate an OAuthAccessToken from your developer account dashboard. You can also allow other users to securely access their own accounts.

  Both of these methods require you to create an application key set to obtain values for the following connection properties: AppId, CertId, DevId, and SiteId.

  The user consent flow additionally requires the RuName and CallbackURL.

  See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

• 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 eBay data, such as ListingStatus.
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 ItemListing WHERE ListingStatus = '"&B8&"'","AppId="&B1&";CertId="&B2&";DevId="&B3&";SiteId="&B4&";RuName="&B5&";CallbackURL="&B6&";InitiateOAuth="&B7&";Provider=Ebay",B9)

👁 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.)