Create a Data Access Object for Autopilot Data using JDBI

JDBI is a SQL convenience library for Java that exposes two different style APIs, a fluent style and a SQL object style. The CData JDBC Driver for Autopilot integrates connectivity to live Autopilot data in Java applications. By pairing these technologies, you gain simple, programmatic access to Autopilot data. This article explains how to build a basic Data Access Object (DAO) and the accompanying code to read Autopilot data.

Create a DAO for the Autopilot Account Entity

The interface below declares the desired behavior for the SQL object to create a single method for each SQL statement to be implemented.

public interface MyAccountDAO {
  //request specific data from Autopilot (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT BusinessName FROM Account WHERE Email = :email")
  String findBusinessNameByEmail(@Bind("email") String email);

  /*
   * close with no args is used to close the connection
   */
  void close();
}

Open a Connection to Autopilot

Collect the necessary connection properties and construct the appropriate JDBC URL for connecting to Autopilot.

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

Autopilot API Profile Settings

Locate your Autopilot API key by navigating to My Account > Autopilot API > Generate and copying the generated key.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Autopilot 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.

A connection string for Autopilot will typically look like the following:

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Autopilot.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';

Use the configured JDBC URL to obtain an instance of the DAO interface. The particular method shown below will open a handle bound to the instance, so the instance needs to be closed explicitly to release the handle and the bound JDBC connection.

DBI dbi = new DBI("jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Autopilot.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';");
MyAccountDAO dao = dbi.open(MyAccountDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Autopilot Data

With the connection open to Autopilot, simply call the previously defined method to retrieve data from the Account entity in Autopilot.

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String businessName = dao.findBusinessNameByEmail("[email protected]");
System.out.println(businessName);

Since the JDBI library is able to work with JDBC connections, you can easily produce a SQL Object API for Autopilot by integrating with the CData JDBC Driver for Autopilot. Download a free trial and work with live Autopilot data in custom Java applications today.