Replicate ScrapingBee Data from PowerShell



The CData ODBC Driver for ScrapingBee enables out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft's built-in support for ODBC. The ODBC driver instantly integrates connectivity to the real ScrapingBee data with PowerShell.

You can use the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC built into PowerShell to quickly automate integration tasks like replicating ScrapingBee data to other databases. This article shows how to replicate ScrapingBee data to SQL Server in 5 lines of code.

You can also write PowerShell code to download ScrapingBee data. See the examples below.

Create an ODBC Data Source for ScrapingBee

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

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.

Connect to ScrapingBee

The code below shows how to use the DSN to initialize the connection to ScrapingBee data in PowerShell:

$conn = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection
$conn.ConnectionString = "DSN=CData API Source x64"

Back Up ScrapingBee Data to SQL Server

After you enable caching, you can use the code below to replicate data to SQL Server.

Set the following connection properties to configure the caching database:

• CacheProvider: The name of the ADO.NET provider. This can be found in the Machine.config for your version of .NET. For example, to configure SQL Server, enter System.Data.SqlClient.

• CacheConnection: The connection string of properties required to connect to the database. Below is an example for SQL Server:

  Server=localhost;Database=RSB;User Id=sqltest;Password=sqltest;

The SQL query in the example can be used to refresh the entire cached table, including its schema. Any already existing cache is deleted.

$conn.Open()
# Create and execute the SQL Query
$SQL = "CACHE DROP EXISTING SELECT * FROM " + $GoogleSearchResults
$cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand($sql,$conn)
$count = $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
$conn.Close()

The driver gives you complete control over the caching functionality. See the help documentation for more caching commands and usage examples. See the help documentation for steps to replicate to other databases.

Other Operations

To retrieve ScrapingBee data in PowerShell, call the Fill method of the OdbcDataAdapter method. To execute data manipulation commands, initialize the OdbcCommand object and then call ExecuteNonQuery. Below are some more examples commands to ScrapingBee through the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC:

Retrieve ScrapingBee Data

$sql="SELECT , from GoogleSearchResults"
 
$da= New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcDataAdapter($sql, $conn)
$dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable
$da.Fill($dt) 
 
$dt.Rows | foreach {
 $dt.Columns | foreach ($col in dt{
 Write-Host $1[$_]
 }
}