Get Power BI Report Visualization Data from REST API with Service Principal

[davidwarshaw]

I have a service principal configured to access Power BI. I can successfully use the REST API to get metadata about dashboards, reports, and datasets. What I can't seem to be able to do is get the actual data displayed in the reports - i.e. the data as displayed in the visualizations as a table. This data can be seen as a table in the report visualization edit view of Power BI.

Is it possible through the REST API, using a service principal, to get this report visualization data in a tabular format?

If so, what endpoints return this data?

[ibarrau · Accepted solution]

Hi. A request like that doesn't exist in Rest API. The only way to get data with the API is executing a query to the semantic model. It has it's limitation. You can read more about that in here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/datasets/execute-queries-in-group

I hope that helps

[davidwarshaw]

Thanks for the response.
Can I get the query that generates the data from the API?
i.e. can I reconstruct the visualization backing data by reading a query from somewhere and then executing it?

[ibarrau]

The API let you write DAX Queries. If you know DAX you can get anything from the model. If you don't, but you have access to the semantic model or report development. Then you can get the query behind specific visuals with the performance analyzer:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-performance-analyzer

The query is usually kind of big. You can test it in the DAX Query view.

I hope that make sense

[davidwarshaw]

I don't think I will be able to use this, but thanks for your help!