Connecting to PredictHQ APIs with Microsoft Excel

Learn how to connect PredictHQ data to Microsoft Excel using APIs.

Use Cases

Demand Forecasting, Dynamic Pricing, Workforce Optimization, Demand Analytics, Inventory Management, Event Visibility

Relevant Industries

Accommodation, Consumer Packaged Goods, Grocery and Supermarkets, Leisure, Travel and Tourism, Marketing and Advertising, Parking, Restaurants, Retail, Transportation and Delivery and Others

Overview

The data used in this guide is based on a popular location, in our case San Francisco City as a whole. Please change the location from San Francisco to the location you want to look at.

Below are the main steps involved in this guide:

1. Building Report Parameters around a Location

   • Example Parameters for this Guide

2. Select an Input method

   • API connection

3. View events data in Excel

Requirements:

1. API: API Access Token

2. Microsoft Excel

Example Parameters for this Guide:

1. Date: user-defined, this tutorial uses a 3-month period from January 1st to March 31st 2024

2. Categories: community, conferences, concerts, expos, festivals, performing-arts, sports - these are our attended categories

3. Event State: Active and Predicted

4. PHQ Attendance: attended events only - filtered to events with an attendance of at least 1

5. Location: San Francisco city (place ID 5391959)

Location could be substituted for a specific latitude and longitude relating to an individual store, or could be scoped even wider depending on need. We suggest utilizing our Suggested Radius API to hone in on a specific shop location and pull only events within a more accurate radius based on those results. For now, we will look at the citywide events in San Francisco as our example.

How to get Events data via PredictHQ's API

This guide provides details on how to load PredictHQ's event data into Microsoft Excel using the Events API. The examples have been provided for Excel running in Microsoft Windows. In this tutorial we'll show you how to connect to the API and load data into a Spreadsheet. Start by creating a new empty Spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.

PredictHQ has a number of different APIs that can be used to build reports, in this example, we will stick to the Events API. Starting this process assumes a PredictHQ API access token has been created by following the API Quickstart guide.

Microsoft Excel will connect using the URL for the Events API: https://api.predicthq.com/v1/events/ but, query parameters must be added to this URL for the Excel connection, in line with the parameters outlined in the Example Parameters for this Guide.

Following these parameters and the Events API documentation we will end up with a URL string like the one below:

https://api.predicthq.com/v1/events/?active.gte=2024-01-01&active.lt=2024-04-01&active.tz=America/Los_Angeles&category=community,conferences,concerts,expos,festivals,performing-arts,sports&state=active,predicted&phq_attendance.gte=1&place.scope=5391959&limit=500

Note: Scope uses the Place ID (geonames ID) for San Francisco (see our tech docs for info on Place ID). If you were looking for events happening around a business location you would use the within parameter with the latitude and longitude of your business location and the radius from the suggested radius API.

Time zone parameter (active.tz) filters results based on that given time zone, even though date results are returned in UTC.

Limit parameter allows for more results returned per “page” which allows for faster loading, rather than the default 10 per page.

See also our filtering guide for details on how to query the Events API for events impacting your locations.

With this API query string, event data can start to be loaded into Microsoft Excel.

First, create a new Spreadsheet. Click on the Data tab and choose Get Data as shown below:

Choose the Advanced tab, not the Basic default. Because the PredictHQ API is Bearer token authorized, the Advanced tab must be selected to include the API Access Token request header.

Add the HTTP request header with the following information:

1. URL parts: our created Events API URL from the above: https://api.predicthq.com/v1/events/?active.gte=2024-01-01&active.lt=2024-04-01&active.tz=America/Los_Angeles&category=community,conferences,concerts,expos,festivals,performing-arts,sports&state=active,predicted&phq_attendance.gte=1&place.scope=5391959&limit=500

2. HTTP request header parameters:

   1. Put Authorization in the first field

   2. Put Bearer <api_token> in the field on the right of the first field with Authorization. where <api_token> will be replaced with your PHQ API Access Token. Just replace <api_token> with your actual API Access Token. Leave the ‘Bearer ’ part in. Below is what the fields will look like once you have put in your API key.

The filled-out information should look like this (except that api_key should be replaced with your actual api_key)

Web Connection URL and Header

After clicking “OK”, the Data Transformation page will open where data shaping options can be made before building the report.

Rename the Query to something relevant, as it defaults to the connection URL string parameters which does not look neat. We recommend renaming it to “PredictHQ Connection”, but if you name it something else you will need to change the Power Query below too.

Rename the Query

In order to transform the columns, open Power Query and paste the code below to format and expand some columns for easy use. To do this, go to the Advanced Editor for this Query, right click on the Query name under Queries and click Advanced Editor:

Right click renamed Query -> Advanced Editor

Replace the entire existing Power Query code with the one below, changing the 2 lines (Lines 4 and 8) that refer to ‘[api_token]’ with the PHQ API Access Token used previously.

This example will not work unless you replace the [api_token] with your token. Lines 2 and 11 refer to the Query name, if you've named it something other than "PredictHQ Connection" you will need to replace it here aswell.

This code expands out the 'impact_patterns' column (see Impact Patterns in our technical documentation for more information) and filters it to accommodation and actual attendance distribution. It renames some essential columns. It also accounts for our API pagination, making sure all results are returned. It is an involved process with multiple steps - the Power Query below is the final output of this multi-stage transformation.

let
    #"PredictHQ Connection" = List.Generate( () =>
    [URL = "https://api.predicthq.com/v1/events/?active.gte=2024-01-01&active.lt=2024-04-01&active.tz=America/Los_Angeles&category=community,conferences,concerts,expos,festivals,performing-arts,sports&state=active,predicted&phq_attendance.gte=1&place.scope=5391959&limit=500",
     Result = Json.Document(Web.Contents(URL, [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer [api_token]"]]))],
    each [URL] <> null,
    each [
        URL = [Result][next],
        Result = Json.Document(Web.Contents(URL, [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer [api_token]"]]))
    ]
),
    #"Converted to Table" = Table.FromList(#"PredictHQ Connection", Splitter.SplitByNothing(), null, null, ExtraValues.Error),
    #"Expanded Column1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Converted to Table", "Column1", {"Result"}, {"Column1.Result"}),
    #"Expanded Column1.Result" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded Column1", "Column1.Result", {"results"}, {"Column1.Result.results"}),
    #"Expanded Column1.Result.results" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Expanded Column1.Result", "Column1.Result.results"),
    #"Expanded Column1.Result.results1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded Column1.Result.results", "Column1.Result.results", {"id", "title", "description", "category", "labels", "rank", "local_rank", "phq_attendance", "entities", "duration", "start", "start_local", "end", "end_local", "updated", "first_seen", "timezone", "location", "geo", "impact_patterns", "scope", "country", "place_hierarchies", "state", "private", "predicted_event_spend", "predicted_event_spend_industries", "phq_labels"}),
    #"Expanded impact_patterns" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Expanded Column1.Result.results1", "impact_patterns"),
    #"Expanded impact_patterns1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded impact_patterns", "impact_patterns", {"vertical", "impact_type", "impacts"}, {"impact_patterns.vertical", "impact_patterns.impact_type", "impact_patterns.impacts"}),
    #"Expanded impact_patterns.impacts" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Expanded impact_patterns1", "impact_patterns.impacts"),
    #"Expanded impact_patterns.impacts1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded impact_patterns.impacts", "impact_patterns.impacts", {"date_local", "value", "position"}, {"impact_patterns.impacts.date_local", "impact_patterns.impacts.value", "impact_patterns.impacts.position"}),
    #"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Expanded impact_patterns.impacts1", each ([impact_patterns.vertical] = "accommodation" and [impact_patterns.impacts.position] = "event_day")),
    #"Changed Number Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Filtered Rows",{{"impact_patterns.impacts.value", Int64.Type}}),
    #"Changed Date Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Changed Number Type", {
    {"impact_patterns.impacts.date_local", type date},
    {"start", type datetime}, {"end", type datetime},
    {"start_local", type datetime}, {"end_local", type datetime}
    }),
    #"Extracted Date" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Changed Date Type", {
        {"start", DateTime.Date, type date}, {"end", DateTime.Date, type date},
        {"start_local", DateTime.Date, type date}, {"end_local", DateTime.Date, type date}
    }),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Extracted Date",{{"phq_attendance", Int64.Type}}),
    #"Renamed Columns" = Table.RenameColumns(#"Changed Type", {
    {"impact_patterns.impacts.date_local", "date_local"},
    {"impact_patterns.impacts.value", "attendance_per_day"}
    })
in
    #"Renamed Columns"

The code in the advanced editor should look like the screen shot below:

Click Close & Apply and wait for the data transformation to finish processing through multiple API pages.

API Close & Apply

After this step the data is now ready to start building a report with, as it has been successfully loaded and transformed in Microsoft Excel. You should see a Spreadsheet like that shown below:

You now have a connection to the API that you can refresh to get updated data.