Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Zenefits in a Connection Pool in Tomcat

The CData JDBC Drivers support standard JDBC interfaces to integrate with Web applications running on the JVM. This article details how to connect to Zenefits data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to Zenefits Data through a Connection Pool in Tomcat

1. Copy the CData JAR and CData .lic file to $CATALINA_HOME/lib. The CData JAR is located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
2. Add a definition of the resource to the context. Specify the JDBC URL here.

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Zenefits Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Zenefits.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Zenefits (see below).

   Zenefits API Profile Settings

   In order to authenticate to Zenefits, you'll need to provide your API Key. To create an API Key, from your account head over to Company Overview > Custom Integrations, then besides Rest API Access select Add Token. Set the API Key in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Zenefits JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   You can see the JDBC URL specified in the resource definition below.

   <Resource name="jdbc/api" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Zenefits.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=my_api_token';" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />

   To allow a single application to access Zenefits data, add the code above to the context.xml in the application's META-INF directory.

   For a shared resource configuration, add the code above to the context.xml located in $CATALINA_BASE/conf. A shared resource configuration provides connectivity to Zenefits for all applications.

3. Add a reference to the resource to the web.xml for the application. Zenefits data JSP jdbc/API javax.sql.DataSource Container
4. Initialize connections from the connection pool: Context initContext = new InitialContext(); Context envContext = (Context)initContext.lookup("java:/comp/env"); DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup("jdbc/API"); Connection conn = ds.getConnection();

More Tomcat Integration

The steps above show how to connect to Zenefits data in a simple connection pooling scenario. For more use cases and information, see the JNDI Datasource How-To in the Tomcat documentation.