Connect to Facebook Data from PowerBuilder via ADO.NET

This article demonstrates using the CData ADO.NET Provider for Facebook in PowerBuilder, showcasing the ease of use and compatibility of these standards-based controls across various platforms and development technologies that support Microsoft .NET, including Appeon PowerBuilder.

This article shows how to create a basic PowerBuilder application that uses the CData ADO.NET Provider for Facebook to perform reads and writes.

1. In a new WPF Window Application solution, add all the Visual Controls needed for the connection properties. Below is a typical connection string:

   InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

   Most tables require user authentication as well as application authentication. Facebook uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate to Facebook, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Facebook.

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

2. Add the DataGrid control from the .NET controls.
3. Configure the columns of the DataGrid control. Below are several columns from the Account table:

   <DataGrid AutoGenerateColumns="False" Margin="13,249,12,14" Name="datagrid1" TabIndex="70" ItemsSource="{Binding}">
   <DataGrid.Columns>
    <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="idColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=Id}" Header="Id" Width="SizeToHeader" />
    <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="nameColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=FromName}" Header="FromName" Width="SizeToHeader" />
   		...
   	</DataGrid.Columns>
   </DataGrid>
   

4. Add a reference to the CData ADO.NET Provider for Facebook assembly.

Connect the DataGrid

Once the visual elements have been configured, you can use standard ADO.NET objects like Connection, Command, and DataAdapter to populate a DataTable with the results of an SQL query:

System.Data.CData.Facebook.FacebookConnection conn 
conn = create System.Data.CData.Facebook.FacebookConnection(connectionString)

System.Data.CData.Facebook.FacebookCommand comm 
comm = create System.Data.CData.Facebook.FacebookCommand(command, conn)

System.Data.DataTable table
table = create System.Data.DataTable

System.Data.CData.Facebook.FacebookDataAdapter dataAdapter
dataAdapter = create System.Data.CData.Facebook.FacebookDataAdapter(comm)
dataAdapter.Fill(table)	
datagrid1.ItemsSource=table.DefaultView

The code above can be used to bind data from the specified query to the DataGrid.