Establishing a Connection

Configure a Connection Profile

From the CData ribbon, click Get Data and select From WordPress connection/s to launch the CData Query window. To setup a new connection, you will have to click the New WordPress Connection button. Here you can set the connection settings, test the connection, and save the connection profile.

Connecting to WordPress

At this time, CData Excel Add-In for WordPress only supports connecting to self-hosted WordPress instances. To connect to data, supply the Url to your wordpress site, and then authenticate as described below.

Supply the URL in its full form. For example, if your site is hosted at http://localhost/wp/wordpress', the URL should be http://localhost/wp/wordpress, and not 'htpp://localhost'. Failure to supply the URL in its full form results in a 'site not found' error.

WordPress supports two types of authentication:

Basic authentication, which is recommended for use in a testing environment; and
OAuth 2.0 authentication, which supports browser-based access from a Desktop application, Web application, or Headless Machine.

Basic Authentication

Basic authentication is recommended for testing environments only.

Before you configure WordPress to use Basic Authentication:

Ensure that your WordPress login has adminstrative privileges.
Know what version of WordPress is running at the local host. (WordPress 4.7 and later support the WordPress REST API natively; earlier versions require the use of a Basic Authentication plug-in to secure access to the REST API.)

To configure Basic Authentication:

Log into your WordPress host.
If you are running an earlier WordPress version than 4.7, install the REST API plugin.
Install the Basic Authentication plugin.
To create custom taxonomies, install the Simple Taxonomy Refreshed
If you prefer installing the plugins manually, extract the compressed folders to the wp-content\plugins folder and then enable the plugins via the WordPress admin interface.
Set the following connection properties:
- AuthScheme: Basic.
- Url: Your WordPress URL.
- User: Your username.
- Password: Your password.

You are now ready to connect.

OAuth 2.0 Authentication

For all non-testing environments, WordPress supports OAuth authentication only. To enable this authentication from all OAuth flows, you must set AuthScheme to OAuth, and you must create a custom OAuth application.

The following subsections describe how to authenticate to WordPress from three common authentication flows. For information about how to create a custom OAuth application, see Creating a Custom OAuth Application. For a complete list of connection string properties available in WordPress, see Connection.

Desktop Applications

To authenticate with the credentials for a custom OAuth application, you must get and refresh the OAuth access token. After you do that, you are ready to connect.

Get and refresh the OAuth access token:

InitiateOAuth: GETANDREFRESH. Used to automatically get and refresh the OAuthAccessToken.
OAuthClientId: The client Id assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthClientSecret: The client secret that was assigned when you registered your application.
CallbackURL: The redirect URI that was defined when you registered your application.

When you connect, the add-in opens WordPress's OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application.

When the access token expires, the add-in refreshes it automatically.

Automatic refresh of the OAuth access token:

To have the add-in automatically refresh the OAuth access token, do the following:

Before connecting to data for the first time, set the following connection parameters:
- InitiateOAuth: REFRESH.
- OAuthClientId: The client Id in your application settings.
- OAuthClientSecret: The client secret in your application settings.
- OAuthAccessToken: The access token returned by GetOAuthAccessToken.
- OAuthSettingsLocation: The path where you want the add-in to save the OAuth values, which persist across connections.
On subsequent data connections, set the following:
- InitiateOAuth
- OAuthSettingsLocation

Connection Properties

The Connection properties describe the various options that can be used to establish a connection.

Managing Connections

After successfully authenticating to WordPress you will be able to customize the data you are importing. To learn more about this, see Managing Connections.

Excel Add-In for WordPress