Doubt about Power BI Rest API -gateway

[francescbarraga]

Hello!

I need some help using Power BI REST API  without Gateway. Let me explain the situation:
We want to create refreshable datasets with the PowerBI REST API using CSV data from the web (our company webserver) as datasources.
We can create a similar datasource in PowerBI manually without a gateway.
The API endpoint for creating a new datasource requires a gateway.
We want to avoid creating a gateway because it is not required for CSV datasources.

The question is,  how to create a datasource without a gateway using the PowerBI REST API as a service principal?

Thanks for your support

[bcdobbs]

Hi,

I'm assuming you're looking at this end point...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/gateways/create-datasource

It is specifically talking about a datasource in a gateway.

What is the end result you want to achieve? Wondering if you're really after a power bi dataflow to make the data available with the service?

[francescbarraga]

Hello Ben,

We want to avoid the use of a gateway... is it possible using PowerBI REST API?

[bcdobbs]

Afraid I'm not 100% clear on what you're attempting to do.

If you have an existing dataset you can configure it to automatically refresh within the service or use 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/datasets/refresh-dataset

to refresh the dataset or specific tables within it. That definently doesn't need a gateway.

[francescbarraga]

Thanks!

As far as I know, this endpoint is used to refresh a dataset that needs to have an underlying datasource for refreshing.

The problem is not that we cannot create datasets that can be refreshed from a datasource.

The problem is that we cannot create the underlying datasource with the PowerBI REST API in the first place.

Can we import Power Query M code with the REST API? With the code, we can describe a dataset and its datasource.

[bcdobbs · Accepted solution]

Ok. No I don't believe the rest api can do that.

You'd need to look at the XLMA end point and interfacing with the tabular object model in C#.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/analysis-services/tom/tom-pbi-datasets?view=asallproducts-allversio...

https://powerbidevcamp.powerappsportals.com/sessions/session04/

Also worth looking at tabular editor 3 if you're just trying to add a table

to an existing dataset in the service. You can create a table and paste the M code straight into it's partition.