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

Create a DAO for the Clarifai Apps 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 MyAppsDAO {
  //request specific data from Clarifai (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Name FROM Apps WHERE UserId = :userId")
  String findNameByUserId(@Bind("userId") String userId);

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

Open a Connection to Clarifai

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

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

Clarifai API Profile Settings

Clarifai uses Personal Access Tokens (PATs) for authentication. To obtain a PAT:

1. Log in to your Clarifai account at https://clarifai.com.
2. Navigate to your profile settings and select Security.
3. Click Create Personal Access Token.
4. Select the required scopes and click Create Token.
5. Copy the generated token (it will only be shown once).

After obtaining your Personal Access Token, set the following connection properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

• APIKey: Set this to your Clarifai Personal Access Token (PAT).

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Clarifai.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_personal_access_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\Clarifai.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_personal_access_token';");
MyAppsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyAppsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Clarifai Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String name = dao.findNameByUserId("my-user-id");
System.out.println(name);

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