Using the CData ODBC Driver for TaxJar 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 TaxJar 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 TaxJar 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 TaxJar

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.

To authenticate to the TaxJar API, first obtain the API Key from the TaxJar UI.

NOTE: the API is available only for Professional and Premium TaxJar plans.

If you already have a Professional or Premium plan you can find the API Key by logging in the TaxJar UI and navigating to Account -> TaxJar API. After obtaining the API Key, you can set it in the APIKey connection property.

Additional Notes

• By default, the CData connector will retrieve data of the last 3 months in cases where the entity support date range filtering. You can set StartDate to specify the minimum creation date of the data retrieved.
• If the API Key has been created for a sandbox API account please set UseSandbox to true, but not all endpoints will work as expected. For more information, refer to the TaxJar developer documentation.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData TaxJar Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for TaxJar
Description = My Description
APIKey = 3bb04218ef8t80efdf1739abf7257144

Execute SQL to TaxJar

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 TaxJar};APIKey = 3bb04218ef8t80efdf1739abf7257144;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT TransactionID, UserID FROM Orders WHERE TransactionID = '123'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.TransactionID, row.UserID)

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