This blog post is written in collaboration with the SAP HANA Database & Analytics, Cross Product Management team – thanks to my colleague Wei Han for her help in reviewing this post

Using the SAP Data Intelligence Modeler, we can create pipelines (graphs) to work with data from a number of sources. One of the first things you may want to try when creating your first pipeline is retrieving data via an API

In this brief blog post, we’ll cover the basics of using the OpenAPI Client operator to retrieve data from a Qualtrics API – List Surveys. Once you understand the basics of working with the OpenAPI Client operator, you should be equipped to retrieve data from other API sources

Our API Request

By default, the Qualtrics API Reference presents a sample API Request for Shell/cURL (the x value in X-API-TOKEN is a stand-in for your individual Qualtrics API Token)

Sample API Request

At time of writing, the OpenAPI Client operator uses the OpenAPI 2.0 specification (formerly known as Swagger 2.0 specification). In this blog post, we will demonstrate how to map our Qualtrics API Request to this specification, however any further exploration of the OpenAPI specification is considered out of scope

Next we will map the Sample API request to the fields of our OpenAPI Connection and Client operator. A visual breakdown is included below

Fields in the Connection are marked in Green, Operator fields marked in Blue

Creating our Connection

Creating the DI Connection for Qualtrics allows for centralized management of the connection if, for example you rely on more than one API which uses the same connection details

From the Data Intelligence Launchpad, select Connection Management then click on the Create Connection button

Click to create a new Connection

For the Connection Type, we want to choose OpenAPI

Host is used to specify the host (name or IP) serving the API. This does not include the scheme or sub-path, but may include the port. For this example, our host is ca1.qualtrics.com

Protocol (Scheme) specifies the transfer protocol of the API. In our case, the protocol used is https

Select ApiKey as our Authentication Type, and fill out the values for API Key Name (this API expects ‘X-API-TOKEN’) and API Key Type (this can be either ‘Header’ or ‘Query’. As we can see from our sample request, the API Key should be sent in the ‘Header’)

Creating the connection in Connection Management

We can retrieve our API Key Value from Qualtrics. We do this by navigating to Account Settings -> Qualtrics IDs ->IDs

Retrieving our Qualtrics API Token

The value in API Token is the final value we need for our DI Connection. We copy it to API Key Value field, click Create and return to the Modeler. 

Creating our Pipeline

First, we start by placing an OpenAPI Client operator on a new graph

OpenAPI Client operator can be found under Connectivity

First, we will select the OpenAPI Client operator. In our case, the values required for Method and Produces are correct by default – we are making a GET request, and the result is expected in the application/json format. Neither of these values need to be changed

Base Path specifies the base path where the API is served, which is relative to the host. It must begin with a leading slash (/). We want to enter /API/v3/surveys. We then want to select the Connection we just created

Setting the Base Path and Connection for our OpenAPI Client Operator

Completing our Graph

At this point, all of the necessary configuration of the OpenAPI Client operator has been completed. The operator will make a request when it receives input to its input port. Without the Workflow Trigger operator (or another compatible operator), the openAPI Client will not run

In order for our example to trigger the API Call exactly once, we will place a Workflow Trigger operator into the graph, and connect its output port to the input port of our OpenAPI Client operator

In order to read the API response, we connect the output port of our OpenAPI Client operator to a Wiretap operator. Our graph is now ready to be tested

Our finished graph

Save and run your graph, then select the Wiretap operator and click on the Open UI symbol to check the output

Our Wiretap Output shows that our request is successful

In this blog post, we’ve covered how we can use an OpenAPI Client operator to make an API request, and verify the response data in a Wiretap operator. We can store these results in a table in HANA, and use them in combination with other APIs (for example, retrieving responses for individual surveys) for modeling or analytics

This blog post may naturally lead to follow up questions, such as “What if I need to pass in additional parameters”, or “What if I want to dynamically change the values of parameters?”. I hope to cover these questions in future blog posts

I hope this blog post has been useful, and I welcome any comments or questions below

Edited March 2022 – Updated the blog post to reflect the removal of the OpenAPI Client’s manual connection mode