Using the CData ODBC Driver for Slack 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 Slack 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 Slack 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.

👁 Image

Connect to Slack

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.

Slack uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties. See the Getting Started section of the help documentation for an authentication guide.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData Slack Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Slack
Description = My Description
OAuthClientId = MyOAuthClientId
OAuthClientSecret = MyOAuthClientSecret
CallbackURL = http://localhost:33333
InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH

Execute SQL to Slack

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 Slack};OAuthClientId = MyOAuthClientId;OAuthClientSecret = MyOAuthClientSecret;CallbackURL = http://localhost:33333;InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Id, Name FROM Channels WHERE IsPublic = 'True'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.Id, row.Name)

After connecting to Slack in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to Slack 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].