@looker/sdk

Looker SDK

The Looker SDK for Typescript/Javascript provides a convenient way to communicate with the Looker API available on your Looker server. The SDK is written in Typescript and uses the Node request and request promise native modules for processing HTTP requests.

DISCLAIMER: This is a beta version of the Looker SDK, using a completely new code generator developed by Looker. Implementations are still subject to change, but we expect most SDK method calls to work correctly. If you run into problems with the SDK, please feel free to report an issue, and please indicate which language SDK you're using in the report.

Getting started

The Looker SDK can be used in a node application in 3 steps:

• install
• configure
• use

Install the Looker SDK into your node application

Using npm:

npm install @looker/sdk

Using yarn:

yarn add @looker/sdk

Configure the SDK for your Looker server

Note: The .ini configuration for the Looker SDK is a sample implementation intended to speed up the initial development of Node applications using the Looker API. See this note on Securing your SDK Credentials for warnings about using .ini files that contain your API credentials in a source code repository or production environment.

Create a looker.ini file with your server URL and API credentials assigned as shown in this example.

[Looker]
# API version is required. 3.1 and 3.0 are currently supported. 3.1 is highly recommended.
api_version=3.1
# Base URL for API. Do not include /api/* in the url
base_url=https://<your-looker-server>:19999
# API 3 client id
client_id=your_API3_client_id
# API 3 client secret
client_secret=your_API3_client_secret

Note: If the application using the Looker SDK is going to be committed to a version control system, be sure to ignore the looker.ini file so the API credentials aren't unintentionally published.

Use the SDK in your code

When the SDK is installed and the server location and API credentials are configured in your looker.ini file, it's ready to be used.

Verify authentication works and that API calls will succeed with code similar to the following:

import { LookerNodeSDK } from '@looker/sdk'
(async () => {
  // create a Node SDK client that reads from an INI file
  const sdk = LookerNodeSDK.createClient()
  // retrieve your user account to verify correct credentials
  const me = await sdk.ok(sdk.me(
    "id, first_name, last_name, display_name, email, personal_space_id, home_space_id, group_ids, role_ids"))
  console.log({me})
  // make any other calls to the Looker SDK
  const dashboards = await sdk.ok(
    sdk.search_dashboards({title: 'My SDK dashboard'})
  )
  if (dashboards.length === 0) {
    console.log('Dashboard not found')
  }
  const [ dashboard ] = dashboards
  // do stuff with dashboard

  ...

  await sdk.authSession.logout()
  if (!sdk.authSession.isAuthenticated()) {
    console.log('Logout successful')
  }
})()

Using NodeSession for automatic authentication

NOTE: As we secure the design of the Looker SDK's authentication practices, the authentication behavior described in this section will likely change.

Almost all requests to Looker's API require an access token. This token is established when the login endpoint is called with correct API3 credentials for client_id and client_secret. When login is successful, the user whose API3 credentials are provided is considered the active user. For this discussion of NodeSession, we'll call this user the API User.

The settings provided to the NodeSession class include the base URL for the Looker instance and the desired API version. When API requests are made, if the auth session is not yet established, NodeSession will automatically authenticate the API User. The NodeSession also directly supports logging in as another user, usually called sudo as another user in the Looker browser application.

API users with appropriate permissions can sudo as another user by specifying a specific user ID in the NodeSession.login() method. Only one user can be impersonated at a time via NodeSession. When a sudo session is active, all SDK methods will be processed as that user.

Sudo behavior with NodeSession

The rest of this section shows sample code for typical use cases for authentication and sudo. This code sample is extracted directly from the sdk methods Jest tests, and assumes apiUser is the default authenticated user record with sudo abilities, and sudoA and sudoB are other enabled Looker user records.

describe('sudo', () => {
  it('login/logout', async () => {
    const sdk = new LookerSDK(session)
    const apiUser = await sdk.ok(sdk.me())
    let all = await sdk.ok(
      sdk.all_users({
        fields: 'id,is_disabled'
      })
    )

    // find users who are not the API user
    const others = all
      .filter(u => u.id !== apiUser.id && (!u.is_disabled))
      .slice(0, 2)
    expect(others.length).toEqual(2)
    if (others.length > 1) {
      // pick two other active users for `sudo` tests
      const [sudoA, sudoB] = others
      // get auth support for login()
      const auth = sdk.authSession as IAuthSession

      // login as sudoA
      await auth.login(sudoA.id.toString())
      let sudo = await sdk.ok(sdk.me()) // `me` returns `sudoA` user
      expect(sudo.id).toEqual(sudoA.id)

      // login as sudoB directly from sudoA
      await auth.login(sudoB.id)
      sudo = await sdk.ok(sdk.me()) // `me` returns `sudoB` user
      expect(sudo.id).toEqual(sudoB.id)

      // logging out sudo resets to API user
      await auth.logout()
      let user = await sdk.ok(sdk.me()) // `me` returns `apiUser` user
      expect(sdk.authSession.isAuthenticated()).toEqual(true)
      expect(user).toEqual(apiUser)

      // login as sudoA again to test plain `login()` later
      await auth.login(sudoA.id)
      sudo = await sdk.ok(sdk.me())
      expect(sudo.id).toEqual(sudoA.id)

      // login() without a sudo ID logs in the API user
      await auth.login()
      user = await sdk.ok(sdk.me()) // `me` returns `apiUser` user
      expect(sdk.authSession.isAuthenticated()).toEqual(true)
      expect(user.id).toEqual(apiUser.id)
    }
    await sdk.authSession.logout()
    expect(sdk.authSession.isAuthenticated()).toEqual(false)
  }, testTimeout)

})

Configuring the SDK with environment variables

Environment variables can be used for the Node version of the Typescript SDK.

Variable name	Description
LOOKERSDK_BASE_URL	A URL like https://my.looker.com:19999. No default value.
LOOKERSDK_API_VERSION	Version of the Looker API to use. Use 3.1 for now, which is the default and used to produce this SDK.
LOOKERSDK_VERIFY_SSL	true, t, yes, y, or 1 (case insensitive) to enable. Any other value is treated as false. Defaults to true if not set.
LOOKERSDK_TIMEOUT	Request timeout in seconds. Defaults to 120 for Node.
LOOKERSDK_CLIENT_ID	API3 credentials client_id. This and client_secret must be provided in some fashion to the Node SDK, or no calls to the API will be authorized. No default value.
LOOKERSDK_CLIENT_SECRET	API3 credentials client_secret. No default value.

Once the desired environment variables are set, the following code is all that's required to initialize the Looker SDK and retrieve the API credential's User information.

const sdk = LookerNodeSDK.createClient(new NodeSettingsEnv())
const me = await sdk.ok(sdk.me())

Additional examples

Looker's open source repository of SDK Examples has more example scripts and applications that show how to use the Looker SDK.

A note about security

Any script or configuration file used to provide credentials to your Looker SDK instance needs to be secured.