Learn more
 

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the FreshBooks Driver to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

FreshBooks Icon FreshBooks JDBC Driver

Complete read-write access to FreshBooks enables developers to search (Customers, Transactions, Invoices, Sales Receipts, etc.), update items, edit customers, and more, from any Java/J2EE application.

In this article

Related articles

Create a Data Access Object for FreshBooks Data using JDBI


A brief overview of creating a SQL Object API for FreshBooks data in 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 FreshBooks integrates connectivity to live FreshBooks data in Java applications. By pairing these technologies, you gain simple, programmatic access to FreshBooks data. This article walks through building a basic Data Access Object (DAO) and the accompanying code to read and write FreshBooks data.

Create a DAO for the FreshBooks Clients 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 MyClientsDAO { //insert new data into FreshBooks @SqlUpdate("INSERT INTO Clients (Email, Credit) values (:email, :credit)") void insert(@Bind("email") String email, @Bind("credit") String credit); //request specific data from FreshBooks (String type is used for simplicity) @SqlQuery("SELECT Credit FROM Clients WHERE Email = :email") String findCreditByEmail(@Bind("email") String email); /* * close with no args is used to close the connection */ void close(); }

Open a Connection to FreshBooks

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

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the FreshBooks JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.freshbooks.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

A connection string for FreshBooks will typically look like the following:

jdbc:freshbooks:CompanyName=CData;Token=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:freshbooks:CompanyName=CData;Token=token;"); MyClientsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyClientsDAO.class); //do stuff with the DAO dao.close();

Read FreshBooks Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method String credit = dao.findCreditByEmail("Captain Hook"); System.out.println(credit);

Write FreshBooks Data

It is also simple to write data to FreshBooks, using the previously defined method.

//add a new entry to the Clients entity dao.insert(newEmail, newCredit);

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