Azure Data Factory and the Exact Online REST API – Introduction

I’m going to do a small blog post series on how to extract data from a REST API using Azure Data Factory. I’m going to use the Exact Online REST API, because it has a series of challenges:

• a complicated process to get your first access token
• endpoints with more data will use pagination
• a 10-minute limit on the use of the access token

Exact Online is a SaaS ERP software package, offering accounting, HRM, CRM and financial processes. It’s a Dutch company, so it’s quite popular in Belgium and The Netherlands, which is also a reason I choose this specific REST API. But most of the techniques used in the blog post series can be applied to any other REST API.

Documentation about the REST API can be found here and here (make sure you’re using a browser where you aren’t logged into Exact Online, because for some reason this messes up the documentation pages). General docs about ADF and REST API can be found here. Note that there are 3rd party vendors out there who sell connectors for ADF and Power BI. They can make your life easier, but why pay when you can do everything yourself, right?

The full series:

1. Fetching your first refresh/access tokens
2. Getting a new access token from ADF
3. Retrieving the divisions
4. Retrieving data from an endpoint
5. Dealing with pagination
6. Getting around the 10 Minute Limit

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