Connect to QuickBooks Online in .NET With C#
QuickBooks Online is one of the top cloud-based accounting solutions, which helps businesses manage their financial operations, track income and expenses, invoice clients, and generate financial reports. This guide will show you how easy it is to establish a secure connection to QuickBooks Online from a C# application using our specialized ADO.NET data provider called dotConnect for QuickBooks Online.
Why dotConnect for QuickBooks Online?
dotConnect for QuickBooks Online is a high-performance ADO.NET data provider that helps access and manage QuickBooks data through the standard ADO.NET or using ORM.
The entire dotConnect product line uses the standard, familiar ADO.NET classes. This helps you get started quickly and eliminates the need to study any specifics or APIs of data sources. With dotConnect, you get easy and secure connections, advanced ORM support, broad compatibility with .NET, and full support for SQL queries that will make your data retrieval and management extremely simple.
Prerequisites
To get started, you will need the following prerequisites:
- Visual Studio 2022: The most comprehensive IDE for .NET and C++ developers on Windows. If you don't have it on your machine yet, you can download and install the free Community Edition.
- QuickBooks Online account: You will need credentials for an active QuickBooks account that you are going to connect to.
- dotConnect for QuickBooks Online: Our data provider will help you connect to your QuickBooks account. It is available for a free 30-day trial. You can either download it from our website or install it as a NuGet package in Visual Studio.
Download and activate dotConnect for QuickBooks Online
30-day free trial
You can download and install dotConnect for QuickBooks Online directly from our website. Alternatively, you can install the Devart.Data.QuickBooks NuGet package in Visual Studio.
No license key is required, and you can start exploring the product immediately.
Full version
After purchasing the full version, go to your profile's Licenses page. Choose your product and click Details. Here, you'll find the license details and the Activation Key.
To activate a connection in your application, add the License Key to your connection string.
Create a project
1. To create a new C# project, open Visual Studio and select Create a new project in the Get started section.
2. Find the Console App (.NET Framework) template for C#, select it, and click Next.
3. Give it a name and specify a path to the directory it will be stored in. After that, click Create.
4. Once it's ready, you can proceed to install dotConnect for QuickBooks Online via the NuGet Package Manager. You can do it directly in Visual Studio. Go to Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution.
5. In the NuGet Package Manager that opens, find Devart.Data.QuickBooks and install it for your project.
Set up a QuickBooks workspace and create an app
Go to Intuit Developer, log in to your account, and create a new workspace if you don't have one.
Next, create a new app in your workspace.
Enter the name of your app.
Once your app is ready, you will be able to get the credentials required for the connection.
Get QuickBooks credentials
Now you can proceed to your OAuth 2.0 Playground. Select your workspace and app.
Next, you will see your Client ID and Client Secret. Click Get authorization code.
You will be prompted to approve the connection to your application. To do that, click Connect.
Next, click Get tokens.
And finally, the last thing you will need to get connected is the refresh token.
For more detailed guidance, we suggest you visit Intuit's official Get started documentation page.
Establish the connection
After taking the previous steps, you will have everything you need to establish a connection. Here is the sample code that will help you connect to QuickBooks Online. Complete it with the following credentials: Client Id, Company Id, Client Secret, Refresh token, and License key. Additionally, set Sandbox to true if you are using the sandbox application type.
string connectionString = "Sandbox=true;" +
"Client Id=**********;" +
"Company Id=**********;" +
"Client Secret=**********;" +
"Refresh token=**********;" +
"License key=**********;";
This is what our entire application code looks like.
using System;
using System.Data;
using Devart.Data.QuickBooks;
namespace QuickBooksConsoleApp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Define the connection string
string connectionString = "Sandbox=true;" +
"Client Id=**********;" +
"Company Id=**********;" +
"Client Secret=**********;" +
"Refresh token=**********;" +
"License key=**********;";
try
{
// Initialize the QuickBooks connection
using (QuickBooksConnection quickBooksConnection = new QuickBooksConnection())
{
quickBooksConnection.ConnectionString = connectionString;
// Open the connection
quickBooksConnection.Open();
Console.WriteLine("Connected to QuickBooks Online successfully.");
// Define the SQL query to fetch data from the Account table
string query = "SELECT Id, Name, FullyQualifiedName, Description FROM Account";
// Create a command object
using (QuickBooksCommand command = new QuickBooksCommand(query, quickBooksConnection))
{
// Execute the command and get a data reader
using (QuickBooksDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader())
{
// Check if data exists
if (reader.HasRows)
{
Console.WriteLine("Fetching Account data:");
Console.WriteLine("--------------------------------------------------");
// Loop through the data
while (reader.Read())
{
string id = reader["Id"]?.ToString() ?? "N/A";
string name = reader["Name"]?.ToString() ?? "N/A";
string fullyQualifiedName = reader["FullyQualifiedName"]?.ToString() ?? "N/A";
string description = reader["Description"]?.ToString() ?? "N/A";
Console.WriteLine($"Id: {id}");
Console.WriteLine($"Name: {name}");
Console.WriteLine($"FullyQualifiedName: {fullyQualifiedName}");
Console.WriteLine($"Description: {description}");
Console.WriteLine("--------------------------------------------------");
}
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("No data found in the Account table.");
}
}
}
// Close the connection
quickBooksConnection.Close();
Console.WriteLine("Connection closed.");
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("An error occurred:");
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit.");
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
Once you successfully connect your application to QuickBooks Online, you will be able to fetch and manage your data.
Conclusion
This is how you can connect your own C# application to QuickBooks Online using dotConnect for QuickBooks. From here, you can expand your application to perform various operations, including the following:
- Query customers, invoices, and accounts
- Write and update QuickBooks data programmatically
If you want to get some firsthand experience, feel free to download dotConnect for QuickBooks Online for a free 30-day trial and give it a go under the real workload. To help you get started as quickly and easily as possible, we suggest you refer to our documentation, which is replete with useful tips and walkthroughs.