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

Create a DAO for the Everhour Assignments 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 MyAssignmentsDAO {
  //request specific data from Everhour (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT ProjectId FROM Assignments WHERE Type = :type")
  String findProjectIdByType(@Bind("type") String type);

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

Open a Connection to Everhour

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

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

Everhour API Profile Settings

Obtain your API Key from your Everhour profile page (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Everhour.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_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\Everhour.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_token';");
MyAssignmentsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyAssignmentsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Everhour Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String projectId = dao.findProjectIdByType("assignment");
System.out.println(projectId);

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