How to extract Tableau's data using REST API - tableau-api

Question

Currently, we have some visualizations created on Tableau. We are required to programmatically extract the underlying data via REST API. What would be the best approach for this?

Answer 1

First step would be to sign in.
You can do this here:
# This example shows how to use the Tableau Server REST API
# to sign in to a server, get back an authentication token and
# site ID, and then sign out.
# The example runs in Python 2.7 and Python 3.3 code
import requests, json
# NOTE! Substitute your own values for the following variables
use_pat_flag = False # True = use personal access token for sign in, false = use username and password for sign in.
server_name = "YOUR_SERVER" # Name or IP address of your installation of Tableau Server
version = "3.11" # API version of your server
site_url_id = "" # Site (subpath) to sign in to. An empty string is used to specify the default site.
# For username and password sign in
user_name = "USERNAME" # User name to sign in as (e.g. admin)
password = "{PASSWORD}"
# For Personal Access Token sign in
personal_access_token_name = "TOKEN_NAME" # Name of the personal access token.
personal_access_token_secret = "TOKEN_VALUE" # Value of the token.
signin_url = "https://{server}/api/{version}/auth/signin".format(server=server_name, version=version)
if use_pat_flag:
# The following code constructs the body for the request.
# The resulting element will look similar to the following example:
#
# {
# "credentials": {
# "personalAccessTokenName": "TOKEN_NAME",
# "personalAccessTokenSecret": "TOKEN_VALUE",
# "site": {
# "contentUrl": ""
# }
# }
# }
#
payload = { "credentials": { "personalAccessTokenName": personal_access_token_name, "personalAccessTokenSecret": personal_access_token_secret, "site": {"contentUrl": site_url_id }}}
headers = {
'accept': 'application/json',
'content-type': 'application/json'
}
else:
# The following code constructs the body for the request. The resulting element will# look similar to the following example:
#
#
# {
# "credentials": {
# "name": "USERNAME",
# "password": "PASSWORD",
# "site": {
# "contentUrl": ""
# }
# }
# }
#
payload = { "credentials": { "name": user_name, "password": password, "site": {"contentUrl": site_url_id }}}
headers = {
'accept': 'application/json',
'content-type': 'application/json'
}
# Send the request to the server
req = requests.post(signin_url, json=payload, headers=headers, verify=False)
req.raise_for_status()
# Get the response
response = json.loads(req.content)
# Parse the response JSON. The response body will look similar
# to the following example:
#
# {
# "credentials": {
# "site": {
# "id": "xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx",
# "contentUrl": ""
# },
# "user": {
# "id": "xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx"
# },
# "token": "CREDENTIALS_TOKEN"
# }
# }
#
# Get the authentication token from the credentials element
token = response["credentials"]["token"]
# Get the site ID from the <site> element
site_id = response["credentials"]["site"]["id"]
print('Sign in successful!')
print('\tToken: {token}'.format(token=token))
print('\tSite ID: {site_id}'.format(site_id=site_id))
# Set the authentication header using the token returned by the Sign In method.
headers['X-tableau-auth']=token
# ... Make other calls here ...
# Sign out
signout_url = "https://{server}/api/{version}/auth/signout".format(server=server_name, version=version)
req = requests.post(signout_url, data=b'', headers=headers, verify=False)
req.raise_for_status()
print('Sign out successful!')
Then, you can use the REST API to download the data of dashboards and views. But the first step is to sign in