Query Jira Service Desk Data through ODBC in Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript code outside of a browser. With the CData ODBC Driver for Jira Service Desk, you can access live Jira Service Desk data from Node.js apps and scripts. In this article, we walk through installing node-odbc and the required tools to create a simple Node.js app with access to live Jira Service Desk data.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData ODBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Jira Service Desk data in Node.js. When you issue complex SQL queries from Node.js to Jira Service Desk, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Jira Service Desk and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to Jira Service Desk Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

You can establish a connection to any Jira Service Desk Cloud account or Server instance.

Connecting with a Cloud Account

To connect to a Cloud account, you'll first need to retrieve an APIToken. To generate one, log in to your Atlassian account and navigate to API tokens > Create API token. The generated token will be displayed.

Supply the following to connect to data:

• User: Set this to the username of the authenticating user.
• APIToken: Set this to the API token found previously.

Connecting with a Service Account

To authenticate with a service account, you will need to supply the following connection properties:

• User: Set this to the username of the authenticating user.
• Password: Set this to the password of the authenticating user.
• URL: Set this to the URL associated with your JIRA Service Desk endpoint. For example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

Note: Password has been deprecated for connecting to a Cloud Account and is now used only to connect to a Server Instance.

Accessing Custom Fields

By default, the connector only surfaces system fields. To access the custom fields for Issues, set IncludeCustomFields.

Building node-odbc

In order to connect to Jira Service Desk through the CData ODBC Driver, you need to build node-odbc manually (after installing the required tools).

Installing the Required Tools

The following commands install the tools required to build node-odbc (note the -g parameter, which installs the tools globally).

npm i -g windows-build-tools
npm i -g node-gyp

Building node-odbc

After installing the required tools, create a directory for the Node.js app and install odbc (which builds the binary for us to use in our Node.js script).

mkdir nodeodbc
cd nodeodbc
npm i -g node

Querying Jira Service Desk from Node.js

With the ODBC Driver installed, a DSN Configured, and node-odbc built, we are ready to query live Jira Service Desk data from a Node.js app. The sample code below connects to a specific DSN and queries the Requests table.

myscript.js

const odbc = require('odbc');

async function queryJiraServiceDesk() {
    const connection = await odbc.connect(`DSN=CData JiraServiceDesk Source`);
    const data = await connection.query('SELECT RequestId, ReporterName FROM Requests');
    console.log(data);
}

queryJiraServiceDesk();

Once you write the app, use node to execute the script:

node myscript.js

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for Jira Service Desk and start working with your live Jira Service Desk data in Node.js. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.