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Connect to Confluence in a Spring Boot Application using CData JDBC Confluence Driver
Spring Boot is a framework that makes engineering Java web applications easier. It offers the ability to create standalone applications with minimal configuration. When paired with the CData JDBC driver for Confluence, Spring Boot can work with live Confluence data. This article shows how to configure data sources and retrieve data in your Java Spring Boot Application, using the CData JDBC Driver for Confluence.
With built-in optimized data processing, the CData JDBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Confluence data. When you issue complex SQL queries to Confluence, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Confluence and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations). Its built-in dynamic metadata querying allows you to work with and analyze Confluence data using native data types.
Creating the Spring Boot Project in Java
In an IDE (in this tutorial, we use IntelliJ), choose a Maven project:
In the generated project, go to the pom.xml file, and add the required dependencies for Spring Boot:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>2.7.2</version>
<relativePath/>
</parent>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>demo</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>demo</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
<properties>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-install-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.5.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>id.install-file</id>
<phase>clean</phase>
<goals>
<goal>install-file</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<file>C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for Confluence ####\lib\cdata.jdbc.confluence.jar</file>
<groupId>org.cdata.connectors</groupId>
<artifactId>cdata-confluence-connector</artifactId>
<version>21</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId>
<version>2.7.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.cdata.connectors</groupId>
<artifactId>cdata-confluence-connector</artifactId>
<version>21</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<distributionManagement>
<repository>
<uniqueVersion>false</uniqueVersion>
<id>test</id>
<name>My Repository</name>
<url>scp://repo/maven2</url>
<layout>default</layout>
</repository>
</distributionManagement>
</project>
Project Structure
In the java directory, create a new package. Usually the name of the package is the name of the groupId (com.example) followed by the artifactId (.MDS).
Make sure that the "java" directory is the sources root; this is indicated with a blue color. You may need to right click the java directory and select Mark Directory -> Sources Root. Also, the resources directory should be marked as Resources Root.

Database Connection Properties
In the application.properties file, we set the configuration properties for the Confluence JDBC Driver, using the Class name and JDBC URL:
spring.datasource.driver=cdata.jdbc.confluence.ConfluenceDriver
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:confluence:User=admin;APIToken=myApiToken;Url=https://yoursitename.atlassian.net;Timezone=America/New_York;
Built-in Connection String Designer
For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Confluence JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.
java -jar cdata.jdbc.confluence.jar
Obtaining an API Token
An API token is necessary for account authentication. To generate one, login to your Atlassian account and navigate to API tokens > Create API token. The generated token will be displayed.
Connect Using a Confluence Cloud Account
To connect to a Cloud account, provide the following (Note: Password has been deprecated for connecting to a Cloud Account and is now used only to connect to a Server Instance.):
- User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the Confluence server.
- APIToken: The API Token associated with the currently authenticated user.
- Url: The URL associated with your JIRA endpoint. For example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.
Connect Using a Confluence Server Instance
To connect to a Server instance, provide the following:
- User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the Confluence instance.
- Password: The password which will be used to authenticate with the Confluence server.
- Url: The URL associated with your JIRA endpoint. For example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

After setting the properties in the application.properties file, we now configure them.
Data Source Configuration
First, we mark the Confluence data source as our primary data source. Then, we create a Data Source Bean.
Create a DriverManagerDataSource.java file and create a Bean within it, as shown below. If @Bean gives an error, Spring Boot may not have loaded properly. To fix this, go to File -> Invalidate Caches and restart. Additionally, make sure that Maven has added the Spring Boot dependencies.
To create a data source bean, we use DriverManagerDataSource Class. This class allows us to set the properties of the data source. The following code shows the bean definition of our data source. Each driver should have a bean.
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.jdbc.DataSourceBuilder;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Primary;
import org.springframework.core.env.Environment;
import javax.sql.DataSource;
public class DriverManagerDataSource{
@Autowired
private static Environment env;
@Bean(name ="Confluence")
@Primary
public static DataSource ConfluenceDataSource()
{
DataSourceBuilder<?> dataSourceBuilder = DataSourceBuilder.create();
dataSourceBuilder.driverClassName("cdata.jdbc.confluence.ConfluenceDriver");
dataSourceBuilder.url("jdbc:confluence:User=admin;APIToken=myApiToken;Url=https://yoursitename.atlassian.net;Timezone=America/New_York;");
return dataSourceBuilder.build();
}
//@Override
public void setEnvironment( final Environment environment) {
env=environment;
}
}
Next, move the Confluence jar file to the Documents folder (see path in command below). Then, click the
Maven icon (top right corner of IntelliJ) and click "Execute Maven Goal." Now, run the following command:
mvn install:install-file -Dfile=C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for Confluence ####\lib\cdata.jdbc.confluence.jar -DgroupId=cdata.jdbc.confluence -DartifactId=cdata-confluence-connector -Dversion=21 -Dpackaging=jar
After pressing enter, we see the following output:
Testing the Connection
The last step is testing the connection. We call the data source in the main method of MDSApplication.java:
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jdbc.DataSourceAutoConfiguration;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import static com.example.demo.DriverManagerDataSources.ConfluenceDataSource;
@SpringBootApplication(exclude = {DataSourceAutoConfiguration.class})
public class MDSApplication {
//remove the comment on the line below
public static void main (){
SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
Connection conn = ConfluenceDataSource().getConnection();
System.out.println("Catalog: "+ conn.getCatalog());
}
}
The output generated should look like this:
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