Using the CData ODBC Driver for SharePoint 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 SharePoint 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 SharePoint as well as PyCharm.

Getting Started

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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 SharePoint

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.

Set the URL property to the base SharePoint site or to a sub-site. This allows you to query any lists and other SharePoint entities defined for the site or sub-site.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SharePoint user credentials when using SharePoint On-Premise.

If you are connecting to SharePoint Online, set the SharePointEdition to SHAREPOINTONLINE along with the User and Password connection string properties. For more details on connecting to SharePoint Online, see the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData SharePoint Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for SharePoint
Description = My Description
User = myuseraccount
Password = mypassword
Auth Scheme = NTLM
URL = http://sharepointserver/mysite
SharePointEdition = SharePointOnPremise

Execute SQL to SharePoint

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 SharePoint};User = myuseraccount;Password = mypassword;Auth Scheme = NTLM;URL = http://sharepointserver/mysite;SharePointEdition = SharePointOnPremise;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Name, Revenue FROM MyCustomList WHERE Location = 'Chapel Hill'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.Name, row.Revenue)

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