JSON Connector

With our new JSON Connector, available in the Yellowfin Marketplace, you can now connect to any data that's in a JSON format!  The JSON Connector allows you to access and report off of local and remote JSON data.  You can access JSON data via FTP, SFTP, a URL, or using the REST API.

Installing the Connector

You'll want to start by downloading the JSON Connector from the Yellowfin Marketplace.  This is a free plug-in, downloaded as a .yfp file.  Download the file and store it somewhere that you can find it later.  Note: to download the plug-in you'll need your Yellowfin portal credentials.  If you're just trying out Yellowfin and want the plug-in, please contact support using the Yellowfin Community for a copy.

Once you have the file, jump over to your Yellowfin server and visit "Administration" > "Plugin Management" to install the plugin.  Click Add to begin the upload process.  Click to Browse to your file, name the Plugin accordingly, and once you see the list of files click Submit to install the plugin.

You should now see your new plugin listed in the box on the Plugin Management screen.  Now that the JSON Connector is installed, let's try a couple of examples for connecting to data.  You can find many examples here.  I"ve chosen a URL and a REST API example to get us started.

Ingesting a JSON File Via URL

In this example, I'll be ingesting JSON data from a URL.  To begin, we'll need to create a new Data Source.  Clicking the Yellow "+" button in the top left will allow you to do so.

You'll notice a new option when creating a data source named "Json Dat..." This will create a data source utilizing the new JSON Connector.

The New Connection screen should look familiar if you've added any Data Sources before, but there are some additional settings to consider when ingesting JSON data, which we'll cover as we work through this example.  Before we start, since we're going to be ingesting JSON data via URL, let's get a valid URL to use in our example.

The first example in the JSON videos uses USGS Earthquake data to demonstrate ingesting a JSON file via URL.  You can see the data sets available here.  For the purposes of this example, I chose all earthquakes over the past 30 days.  Copy the URL of the data set you choose and head back over to Yellowfin.

Past your URL into the "Json File URL" box and click "Validate" to verify the format.

As you can see, we now have some new buttons available.  The "JDesigner" allows us to decide what data we want to pull in, and designate names and data types for the fields.  Go ahead and click "Open JDesigner" to open the Designer.

Your JSON URL should have been passed through to the designer, shown in the top left.  Clicking "GO" should give you a preview of the data, as shown.  Clicking "Add all keys" will pull in all the fields from the JSON file.  The easiest method here is likely doing so and then removing fields you do not want at that point.

From here, you can edit the Column Name of each field and dictate the data type as these are pulled in to your View.  Once you're done, click 'Download' at the bottom of the screen.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I'll be using the 'Save to designer' option.  Note that this step may seem to stall.  Be patient to give Yellowfin sufficient time to save the path.  Once you see 'JSON path file has been saved' click 'Close' and then close the Jpath Generator window.

Next click 'Import Jpath' to import what you've just configured.  Finally, go ahead and click 'Create View' and give Yellowfin some time to process your JSON Data Source configuration.  On the 'Create View' step, simply choose the JSON DATA table, name your View and click 'Create Analysis'.

This will save your View and put you into the Report Builder, allowing you to build your first report from your JSON Data!

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