LINQ to ScrapingBee Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the ScrapingBee via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for ScrapingBee. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData ScrapingBee Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Using API Key Authentication

   ScrapingBee uses API key authentication. To obtain an API key:

   1. Sign in to your ScrapingBee account at https://app.scrapingbee.com
   2. Navigate to the Dashboard and locate your API key in the top section.
   3. Copy the API key for use in the connection string.

   After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
   Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:
   • APIKey: Set this to your ScrapingBee API key.

   Example Connection String

   Profile=C:\profiles\ScrapingBee.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key";
   

   Connecting to ScrapingBee

   Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to ScrapingBee and query data from any of the available tables. All tables require at least one input parameter (such as a search query or product ID) to retrieve data.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\ScrapingBee.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key";

👁 Required connection properties for the data source. (QuickBooks is shown.)

5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting APIEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

APIEntities context = new APIEntities();

var googlesearchresultsQuery = from googlesearchresults in context.GoogleSearchResults
 select googlesearchresults;

foreach (var result in googlesearchresultsQuery) {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.