rothnic / google-search-tableau-connector

Tableau Web Data Connector for Elasticsearch

elasticsearch-tableau-connector

Tableau Web Data Connector for Elasticsearch

Overview

This is an instance of a Tableau Web Data Connector for Elasticsearch. This will extract a set of data from Elasticsearch based on the cluster URL, index name, type and optional custom query and create a Tableau extract of the data. The connector will query the specified type's mapping in Elasticsearch to report the fields and data types that Tableau can expect to see.

This connector should be periodically refreshed, as the extract only includes data from the point in time that it was executed.

The connector works by retrieving 'pages' of data from Elasticsearch up to either the limit specified, or up to the total number of hits. The user can override the batch size to retrieve more records per page if desired.

Known Issues and Limitations

• At this time there appears that the Tableau framework that executes the connector will only make 6 requests for pages of data in Elasticsearch, after this a Maximum Number of Requests Reached error will be logged
• Fields with array, object, or geo_point data types are not supported, they will be ignored

Configuration

• You must enable CORS support in your Elasticsearch server. Set the following setting in elasticsearch.yml:

http.cors.enabled = true

Elasticsearch Configuration Reference

If you use some other front end HTTP proxy in front of your Elasticsearch cluster, you will need to make sure that CORS requests are allowed, including authorization headers.

Building and Running

From the command line execute:

grunt build

This will package the connector files in the public folder.

You can run the application at the command line with grunt with:

grunt

This will watch all sub-directories for changes and reload the application if anything changes. Running this app will simpy host all the connector resources but when requested stand alone will not do anything useful. You should either use the connector within the Web Data Connector SDK test harness, or use the connector from Tableau Desktop or Server.

Usage

Using in Tableau Desktop

Run the application, from the command line execute:

node index.js

or from a development machine, you can run:

grunt

Make note of the URL that the connector app is running on, e.g.:

Elasticsearch Tableau Web Data connector server listening at http://0.0.0.0:3000

Simply choose the 'Web Data Connector' as your data source and enter the URL (you might need to enter the IP address or host name).

From there ent

Importing into Tableau Server

Execute the build for this project from the command line:

grunt build

For each file in the public/ folder, import into Tableau Server by:

• Ensure the Tableau command line tools are in your PATH
• From a command line execute the following:

tabadmin import_webdataconnector elasticsearch-connector.html
tabadmin import_webdataconnector bootstrap.css
tabadmin import_webdataconnector bootstrap.js
tabadmin import_webdataconnector elasticsearch.png
// other files...

Get the URL of the elasticsearch-connector.html on the Tableau Server by executing:

tabadmin list_webdataconnectors --urls

And from Tableau go to 'Web Data Connector' and enter the URL of the connector:

http://<your tableau server>/webdataconnectors/elasticsearch-connector.html

Using with the Web Data Connector SDK

If you are running this web app locally, and testing from the Tableau Web Data Connector SDK, simply enter:

http://localhost:3000/elasticsearch-connector.html

into the Web Connector URL input field in the SDK's form.

From there you should see this connector's UI:

Using the Connector UI

The Elasticsearch connector UI includes the following fields:

Field Name	Data Type	Description
Connection Name	String	Name of the data source connection displayed in the Tableau workbook
Elasticsearch URL	String	[Required] URL of the Elasticsearch cluster
Index name	String	[Required] Name of the index in the Elasticsearch cluster
Type	String	[Required] Name of the type in the Elasticsearch cluster to query
Use custom query?	Boolean	If true, indicates if the extract should use a custom query against Elasticsearch, if false extract will be a 'match all'
Query	String	If Use custom query? is true, this will be the JSON request payload sent to Elasticsearch. from, and size will be overwritten if supplied. Refer to Elasticsearch Query DSL for a reference on writing a query
Batch size of per request to Elasticsearch	Integer	Number of rows to retrieve at once, defaults to 10, should probably be 1000+
Total limit on numnber of rows to sync	Integer	Limit of rows to include in extract, defaults to 100, but generally should be left blank to indicate that all matching rows should be included

The 'Submit' button will execute the extract and report the total number of rows and the executing time when completed.