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

Create a DAO for the FormSite FormItems 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 MyFormItemsDAO {
  //request specific data from FormSite (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Label FROM FormItems WHERE Position = :position")
  String findLabelByPosition(@Bind("position") String position);

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

Open a Connection to FormSite

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

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

FormSite API Profile Settings

Log into your Formsite account and visit the Admin Portal to generate or retrieve your API key. Your

ServerNumber

is the numeric part of your server URL and

UserDirectory

is your account's directory path.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\FormSite.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;ServerNumber=your_server_number;UserDirectory=your_user_directory';

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\FormSite.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;ServerNumber=your_server_number;UserDirectory=your_user_directory';");
MyFormItemsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyFormItemsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read FormSite Data

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

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

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