REDCap URl

[WeikelB]

I can't seem to get the data connection to work in Tableau. I work for a non-profit and we do not have our own REDCap server, so all of our projects are housed on Vanderbilt's. The URL I find under the API documentation is theirs, but when I use this in conjunction with my API Token Tableau attempts to execute the request endlessly with no result.

Any advice?

[xHeliotrope]

i would see if the API works by itself, without the web data connector first.

you should be able to run a simple python script, like:

from requests import post
# Two constants we'll use throughout
TOKEN = 'your api token'  # this is the api token that you got from the vanderbuilt documentation
URL = 'https://redcap.vanderbilt.edu/api/'

payload = {'token': TOKEN, 'format': 'json', 'content': 'metadata'}

response = post(URL, data=payload)
print(response.status_code)
print(response.text)

to run that script, you would have to:

1. install python
2. run pip install requests
3. put that code in a file(we'll call it myfile.py), and then run it in your terminal like python myfile.py it would give you the status code and the response text from trying to access redcap.

if it was working, you'd expect to get a response code of 200. this would probably mean that i need to update the web dataconnector to account for newer versions of tableau.

if its unauthorized, you'll get something in the 400s. this probably means that you'll either have to get a new api key from vanderbuilt, or ask their admins if their are any special requirements for using their api.

that would be what i would do