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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/xero-odata-infragistics-reveal.rst

⇱ Analyze Xero Data in Infragistics Reveal

Analyze Xero Data in Infragistics Reveal

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use the CData API Server to create an OData API on top of Xero data and visualize live Xero data in Infragistics Reveal.

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live Xero data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Xero, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Xero in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

About Xero Data Integration

Accessing and integrating live data from Xero has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:

  • Connect to Xero Accounts and both US and Australian Payroll APIs.
  • Read, write, update, and delete Xero objects like Customers, Transactions, Invoices, Sales Receipts and more.
  • Use SQL stored procedures for actions like adding items to a cart, submitting orders, and downloading attachments.
  • Work with accounting, payroll, file, fixed asset, and project data.

Customers regularly integrate their Xero data with preferred tools, like Tableau, Qlik Sense, or Excel, and integrate Xero data into their database or data warehouse.


Getting Started


Connect to Xero from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

  1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection 👁 Adding a connection
  2. Select "Xero" 👁 Selecting a Connector (Salesforce is shown).
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Xero.

    To connect, set the Schema connection property in addition to any authentication values. Xero offers authentication for private applications, public applications, and partner applications. Set the XeroAppAuthentication property to PUBLIC, PRIVATE, or PARTNER, depending on the type of application configured. To connect from a private application, you will additionally need to set the OAuthAccessToken, OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, CertificateStoreType, CertificateStore, and CertificateStorePassword.

    To connect from a public or partner application, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL, or you can register an app to obtain your own OAuth values.

    See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to authenticating to Xero.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).

Add Xero Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Xero, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Xero data.

  1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource 👁 Adding a new resource
  2. Select the Xero connection 👁 Selecting a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next 👁 Selecting a Table (Salesforce is shown)
  4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
  5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Xero from Reveal through API Server.

  1. Click Settings -> Users
  2. Click Add
  3. Configure a User with access to the Xero Connection and Resource(s) 👁 Creating a new user
👁 API Server users

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

  • Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
  • Allow all domains without '*': ON
  • Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
  • Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

👁 Configuring CORS settings

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Xero data in Reveal.

  1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New 👁 Adding a new dashboard
  2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed 👁 Adding a new OData data source
  3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc 👁 Configuring the OData URL
  4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token 👁 Configuring the credentials
  5. Select the entity you wish to visualize 👁 Selecting an entity to visualize (Salesforce is shown.)
  6. Select fields and choose a chart type 👁 Visualizing data in Reveal (Salesforce is shown.)

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Xero data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Xero (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Xero data in tools that consume OData APIs.