Task 01: Prepare the environment

Introduction

Best For You Organics wants to index proprietary data sources that have no pre‑built connector. Building a custom Graph connector offers full control but requires a TypeScript toolchain.

Description

In this task you will prepare the node‑based development environment by using npm to globally install the create‑graph‑connector scaffolding utility.

Success criteria

PowerShell reports successful installation of create‑graph‑connector.

Key steps

01: Install the scaffolding utility

Expand this section to view the solution

On the taskbar for the @lab.VirtualMachine(CLIENT01).SelectLink virtual machine, right-click Start (Windows icon), and select Terminal (Admin) to open a PowerShell session with Admin privileges.

Select Yes to allow the Terminal app to make changes to your device.
At the PowerShell prompt, run the following command. This command installs the create-graph-connector package and related tools.
```
 npm i - create-graph-connector 
```
Change to the Graph_Connector directory by running the following command:
```
 cd C:\Users\Admin\Graph_Connector 
```
To begin creating the project, run the following command:
```
 npm create graph-connector 
```
Select y to install any required packages.
Configure the create-graph-connector project by entering the values in the following table.

Item	Value
Project name:	sampleconnector
Graph connector name:	Sample Connector
Graph connector description:	Imports data from Contoso app
Connection ID (between 3 and 32 chars):	sampleconnector
Template	TypeScript (basic)

Run the following command to switch the context to the newly created project directory:
```
 cd .\sampleconnector\ 
```
Run the following command to open the project in Visual Studio Code (VSCode):
```
 code .  
```
A new VSCode window will open. Select Yes, I trust the authors. Ignore any other pop-up windows.
In VSCode, in the left pane, select Explorer to view the SAMPLECONNECTOR files.

The project that gets created by the template creator is based on TypeScript. All of the code that supports the custom connector is built with TypeScript.

However, you are not constrained to using TypeScript when creating Graph connectors, you can use any technology that’s able to perform HTTP calls.

Examples of other technologies can be reviewed here: Graph-Connectors-Samples and more information on Graph connectors can be found here: Connectors Gallery.