Using the CData ODBC Driver for RSS in PyCharm

The CData ODBC Drivers can be used in any environment that supports loading an ODBC Driver. In this tutorial we will explore using the CData ODBC Driver for RSS from within PyCharm. Included are steps for adding the CData ODBC Driver as a data source, as well as basic PyCharm code to query the data source and display results.

To begin, this tutorial will assume that you have already installed the CData ODBC Driver for RSS as well as PyCharm.

Add Pyodbc to the Project

Follow the steps below to add the pyodbc module to your project.

1. Click File -> Settings to open the project settings window.
2. Click Project Interpreter from the Project: YourProjectName menu.
3. To add pyodbc, click the + button and enter pyodbc.
4. Click Install Package to install pyodbc.

Connect to RSS

You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. See the Getting Started section in the CData driver documentation for a guide to creating a DSN on your OS.

You can connect to RSS and Atom feeds, as well as feeds with custom extensions. To connect to a feed, set the URL property. You can also access secure feeds. A variety of authentication mechanisms are supported. See the help documentation for details.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData RSS Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for RSS
Description = My Description
URI = http://broadcastCorp/rss/

Execute SQL to RSS

Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.

import pyodbc

cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for RSS};URI = http://broadcastCorp/rss/;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Author, Pubdate FROM Latest News WHERE Category = 'US'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.Author, row.Pubdate)

After connecting to RSS in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to RSS feeds as if it were a standard database. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this tutorial, please contact us at [email protected].