Qlik Sense has a range of different connection options. This is one of the main strong suits of the products. As you can see from the visual below, there are a range of built in connections that are included as standard, however there are also additonal connectors for things like FTP/SFTP, Twitter, Google Analytics and many more. A fill list can be found here:
One connection option is a REST API. A RESTful API is an application program interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. APIs are a great source of data and can allow you to get data from external systems into your internal network.
Many free APIs exist that allow you to practice linking to APIs, such as https://data.police.uk/docs/
To use this API, go to Qlik Sense and create a new application. Once you have done this, open the data manager and and click the REST API option from the data connections.
Once this is done, you will get the screen below. In this screen you need to configure the settings to the REST API you are using.
Most APIs come with documentation to do this, however the police one is very straight forward to use. There is no authentication required so post the URL into the top box.
Give the connection a name and create. The API should connect and you will then get data in the data preview.
From here you can then carry on as normal and create your data model. Using this process you would then be able to create dashboards of externally hosted systems, such as HR systems, ERP systems and many more. There are a wide variety of paid and free ones, such as Opta stats for football, to weather data and currency data.
