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

Create a DAO for the Flowlu AgileCategories 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 MyAgileCategoriesDAO {
  //request specific data from Flowlu (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Name FROM AgileCategories WHERE ProjectId = :projectId")
  String findNameByProjectId(@Bind("projectId") String projectId);

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

Open a Connection to Flowlu

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

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

Flowlu API Profile Settings

In your Flowlu account, navigate to System Settings > API Settings > Create to generate an API key. Your Company name is the subdomain from your Flowlu account URL.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Flowlu.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Company=your_company_subdomain';

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\Flowlu.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Company=your_company_subdomain';");
MyAgileCategoriesDAO dao = dbi.open(MyAgileCategoriesDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Flowlu Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String name = dao.findNameByProjectId("1");
System.out.println(name);

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