Create a Data Access Object for Beeminder 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 Beeminder integrates connectivity to live Beeminder data in Java applications. By pairing these technologies, you gain simple, programmatic access to Beeminder data. This article explains how to build a basic Data Access Object (DAO) and the accompanying code to read Beeminder data.

Create a DAO for the Beeminder ArchivedGoals 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 MyArchivedGoalsDAO {
  //request specific data from Beeminder (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Title FROM ArchivedGoals WHERE IsWon = :isWon")
  String findTitleByIsWon(@Bind("isWon") String isWon);

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

Open a Connection to Beeminder

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

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

Beeminder API Profile Settings

Log in to your Beeminder account and navigate to Settings > Account > Personal Auth Token to copy your auth_token value.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Beeminder 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 Beeminder will typically look like the following:

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Beeminder.apip;ProfileSettings='AuthToken=your_auth_token';

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\Beeminder.apip;ProfileSettings='AuthToken=your_auth_token';");
MyArchivedGoalsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyArchivedGoalsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Beeminder Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String title = dao.findTitleByIsWon("true");
System.out.println(title);

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