Forum Discussion

Michiel's avatar
Michiel
Resolver III
8 years ago
Solved

Encode a Text field

I'm using an API requiring a token in Base64 encoding, coming from a text string. Playing around with the query editor and M, I've been able to succesfully convert the encoded string back to the ori...
Need Help
  • v-jiascu-msft's avatar
    v-jiascu-msft
    8 years ago

    Hi Michiel,

     

    Try the formula below.

    Binary.ToText(Text.ToBinary([Column1]), 0)

    base64

     

    Best Regards,

    Dale

Michiel's avatar
Michiel
Resolver III
7 years ago

I'm not familiar with that, but I must say that the web.contents function in M is pretty powerful. In my case, I ended up not using encoding at all but constructing the encoded string directly (long story to explain, but it allowed me to have separate Power Queries to list the fields I want to retrieve from a specific entity).

You do know that it's possible to call a Python script from M? There are some restrictions, though.

Jonas1's avatar
Jonas1
Helper I
7 years ago

Oh wow, that is nice. 

 

The only thread I could find on these other librairies said that it would either require some advanced coding, or I would have to subscribe for a program.

 

So I ended up using Python yes. Power BI Service does not support any of the required libraries, but I call the API in Python, transform the data there and import the output as text files to Power BI via the folder connector. Not the ideal solution considering I need to schedule upodates in Python as well now, but it works. 

 

If you Michiel or anyone else are looking for more opportunities with connecting to APIs, please give my suggestion a vote here. Python truly is an awesome and easy to use tool, that would great with a further integration in Power BI :)