Build FreshBooks-Connected Apps in Mendix

Mendix is a high-productivity app platform that allows you to build and maintain both mobile and web applications at-scale. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, Mendix provides instant, cloud-to-cloud access to FreshBooks data for applications. This article demonstrates how to connect to a CData Connect Cloud data source from within Mendix.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for FreshBooks, allowing you to import data from live FreshBooks data in Mendix — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build web and mobile applications from within Mendix, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to FreshBooks, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested FreshBooks data quickly.

Configure FreshBooks Connectivity for Mendix

Connectivity to FreshBooks from Mendix is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with FreshBooks data from Mendix, we start by creating and configuring a FreshBooks connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "FreshBooks" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to FreshBooks.

   To connect to FreshBooks, you can set the CompanyName and Token connection properties. Alternatively, you can use the OAuth authentication standard.

   OAuth can be used to enable other users to access their own company data. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret by registering an app. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add FreshBooks Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add FreshBooks OData Endpoints in Connect Cloud

After connecting to FreshBooks, create OData Endpoints for the desired table(s).

1. Navigate to the OData page and click Add to create new OData endpoints
2. Select the FreshBooks connection (e.g. FreshBooks1) and click Next
3. Select the table(s) you wish to work with and click Confirm

With the connection and OData endpoints configured, you are ready to connect to FreshBooks data from Mendix.

Build a FreshBooks-Connected App

With OData endpoints added to Connect Cloud, you can build an app in Mendix with live access to FreshBooks data.

Downloading the OData Metadata File

When creating a connection in Mendix, the connection flow requires a Data Source Contract File. Follow these steps to download the OData metadata file for CData Connect Cloud using curl, a command line tool:

1. Open a command-line window for your operating system. On Windows, open the start menu, type cmd, and press the Enter key to open a command prompt. On macOS and Linux, open a Terminal window.
2. To check if curl is installed on your system, type curl -help and press the enter key. If it is not installed, install it from the curl website.
3. Issue the following curl command, replacing USER with your CData Connect Cloud username and PAT with the PAT you generated above: curl -u USER:PAT https://cloud.cdata.com/api/odata/service/$metadata -o metadata.xml
4. Locate the metadata.xml file that the curl command created and move it to an accessible location.

Connecting to CData Connect Cloud in Mendix

Follow these steps to establish a connection from Mendix to CData Connect Cloud:

1. Login to Mendix and open the Data Hub page.
2. In the Register a Data Source section, select OData.
3. Upload the metadata.xml file from the steps above and click Next.
4. Enter your desired values for Data Source Name and Data Source Version. In the Data Source Relative Path field, enter /api/odata/service and click Next.
5. On the Application information page, click Register a new application.
6. Enter a name in Application Name and select a technical owner (by default, this is the user who is currently logged in).
7. Click Next. In the Environment Name field, enter a desired name (for example, CData Connect Cloud). In the Environment Location field, enter https://cloud.cdata.com and select the appropriate Environment Type (e.g. Production), depending on what is needed.
8. Click Done! to create your connection.

You can now use your connection in Mendix Studio Pro to easily create applications with access to live FreshBooks data.

Get CData Connect Cloud

To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect Cloud today!