Import Real-Time REST Data via ODBC in ColdFusion to Build Applications

Adobe ColdFusion is a web and mobile application development platform. It uses its own scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), to create data-driven websites as well as generate remote services, such as REST. When ColdFusion is paired with the CData ODBC Driver for REST, you can link your ColdFusion web and mobile applications to operational REST data. This allows for your applications to be more robust and complete. This article details how to use the ODBC driver to create a table populated with REST data from within a ColdFusion markup file.

To follow along with this tutorial, you need to install the CData ODBC Driver for REST and Adobe ColdFusion.

Configuring the Connection

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 process. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

After setting the and providing any authentication values, set to "XML" or "JSON" and set to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

The property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

• Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
• FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
• Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

Adding a Data Source and Creating a Table

After creating a DSN, follow the steps below to add a new data source, test our connection to it, create a ColdFusion markup file, and, finally, import REST Data and display it in a table in ColdFusion:

1. From the ColdFusion administrator interface, choose Data & Services. 👁 Selecting Data & Services
   
2. Here, click "Add New Data Source". The data source name can be any name, provided it conforms to the ColdFusion variable naming conventions. For our ODBC driver, choose "ODBC Socket", then click the "Add" button. 👁 Adding Data Source Name
   
3. From the ODBC DSN Dropdown menu select CData REST Sys. Under the Advanced Settings section, leave the Connection String blank. Note that any properties specified in this input field will override the ones specified in the DSN Configuration. 👁 Populating driver properties
   
4. Now, test the connection by pressing the check mark to the left of the CDataRESTODBC data source you just created. When the data source reports an "OK" status, it is ready for use. 👁 Testing the connection
   
5. Next, create a new ColdFusion Markup file (.cfm) and place it in the wwwroot directory ("C:\ColdFusion2021\cfusion\wwwroot") for ColdFusion.

   The following code queries the data source:

    
    <cfquery name="RESTQuery" dataSource="CDataRESTODBC"> 
    SELECT * FROM people 
    </cfquery> 
    

   And a CFTable can be used to quickly output the table in HTML:

    
    <cftable 
    query = "RESTQuery" 
    border = "1" 
    colHeaders 
    colSpacing = "2" 
    headerLines = "2" 
    HTMLTable 
    maxRows = "500" 
    startRow = "1"> 
   
    <cfcol header="<b>[ personal.name.first ]</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="[ personal.name.first ]"/> 
   
    <cfcol header="<b>[ personal.name.last ]</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="[ personal.name.last ]"/> 
   
    ...
   
    </cftable> 
    

   Full code, including the HTML portion is available below:

    
    <html> 
    <head><title>CData Software | REST people Table Demo </title></head> 
    <body> 
    <cfoutput>#ucase("REST people Table Demo")#</cfoutput> 
    <cfquery name="RESTQuery" dataSource="CDataRESTODBC"> 
   
    SELECT * FROM people 
   
    </cfquery> 
    <cftable 
    query = "RESTQuery" 
    border = "1" 
    colHeaders 
    colSpacing = "2" 
    headerLines = "2" 
    HTMLTable 
    maxRows = "500" 
    startRow = "1"> 
    <cfcol header="<b>[ personal.name.first ]</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="[ personal.name.first ]"/> 
   
    <cfcol header="<b>[ personal.name.last ]</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="[ personal.name.last ]"/> 
   
    ...
   
    </cftable> 
    </body> 
   
    </html> 
    

6. Finally, run the code in a browser. It produces a table populated with REST data! 👁 Running the code
   

As a note, the CData ODBC Drivers also support parameterized queries using the cfqueryparam element. For example:

SELECT * FROM Account WHERE name = 

Get Started Today

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for REST and start building REST-connected applications with Adobe ColdFusion. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.