publish tableau workbook (twb or twbx) without tableau desktop

Question

Has anybody found a way to spoof the requests that tableau desktop makes when publishing a report? I obviously know that they do not provide an API, but it seems like it should be pretty straightforward to just authenticate, and then POST the workbook. Has anybody found a way to do this? I publish a few workbooks very regularly (with minor changes that I can make using sed/awk) and I would like to set up a script to automate the process.

Renayrenckens

Answer 1

No need to reverse-engineer the POST - you can use the TabCmd.exe console app to publish the workbook to Server:

tabcmd.exe login -u username -p password -s http://serverlocation
tabcmd.exe publish -n "c:\path\to\SomeWorkbook.twbx"

Batch this puppy up and you have an easy way to publish.

BTW, if you don't have TabCmd on your box, copy it from the \bin folder of server, along with the following support files:

boost_signals_vc100-mt-1_45.dll
iconv.dll
libeay32.dll
ssleay32.dll

Compulsive

This is a great answer, except I need something that can work cross-platform. :( – Renayrenckens

Ah, yeah, you're stuck then, sorry. If it makes you feel any better the Tableau devs know that a true web service really needs to be created to do this sort of stuff. You won't see it in 7, but who knows about the next version. – Compulsive

Answer 2

you can create a wcf service and host in tableau server as a windows service. write some opretation contract which can execute tabcmd commands in server. from outside you can call operations to publish reports.

Yseulte