Getting selected element in a Power BI report from API

[-Rem-]

I am looking to get what item has been selected in Power BI and to send that information to a program outside of Power BI.

Previously, I have done this in connection with PowerApps. Using PowerBIIntegration.Data, I was able to get information based on a visual selection in Power BI - such as which customer had been selected in a list. We have now decided to replace PowerApps with custom developed third party software for our particular use case. So now, instead of being able to select a customer in Power BI and have PowerApps be automatically pre-populated with information from this customer I need a way so I can still select a customer in Power BI but get the information to a different destination. I have researched the REST API PBI offers but I was unsuccesful. 

[MattCalderwood · Accepted solution]

Hi @-Rem- 

if you are using the PowerBI Javascript API to perform the embedding - then you can use the 'Events' capability within reports.
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerBI-JavaScript/wiki/Handling-Events

Registering to the 'dataSelected' event will let your application handle selections that it is interested in.
It can a little bit fiddly to filter out the noise to find only the events you are interested in - but this technique is reliable and works very well.

Another possible option is to use the 'Commands' API -> https://github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-JavaScript/wiki/Commands
This will let you extend the context/header menu on some visuals. You can then acces the datapoints that are currently 'in focus' and perform actions in your app that way.

Hope this helps.

[-Rem-]

Thank you very much, this looks like exactly the kind of reference I need. I only ever got the REST API which did not seem capable of solving the issue for me but this seems like it should be able to handle the job.