Analyze Facebook Ads Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live Facebook Ads data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Facebook Ads, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Facebook Ads in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to Facebook Ads from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection 👁 Adding a connection
   
2. Select "Facebook Ads" 👁 Selecting a Connector (Salesforce is shown).
   
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Facebook Ads.

   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.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).
   

Add Facebook Ads Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Facebook Ads, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Facebook Ads data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource 👁 Adding a new resource
   
2. Select the Facebook Ads connection 👁 Selecting a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next 👁 Selecting a Table (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Facebook Ads from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the Facebook Ads Connection and Resource(s) 👁 Creating a new user
   

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Facebook Ads data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New 👁 Adding a new dashboard
   
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed 👁 Adding a new OData data source
   
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc 👁 Configuring the OData URL
   
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token 👁 Configuring the credentials
   
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize 👁 Selecting an entity to visualize (Salesforce is shown.)
   
6. Select fields and choose a chart type 👁 Visualizing data in Reveal (Salesforce is shown.)
   

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Facebook Ads data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Facebook Ads (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Facebook Ads data in tools that consume OData APIs.