Connect to FreshBooks Data and Transfer Data in Talend

This article shows how you can easily integrate the CData JDBC driver for FreshBooks into your workflow in Talend. This article uses the CData JDBC Driver for FreshBooks to transfer FreshBooks data in a job flow in Talend.

Connect to FreshBooks in Talend as a JDBC Data Source

You can follow the procedure below to establish a JDBC connection to FreshBooks:

1. Add a new database connection to FreshBooks data: To add a new connection, expand the Metadata node, right-click the Db Connections node, and then click Create Connection.
2. In the resulting wizard, enter a name for the connection.

3. On the next page, select Generic JDBC from the DB Type menu and enter the JDBC URL.

   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 typical JDBC URL is below:

   jdbc:freshbooks:CompanyName=CData;Token=token;
4. Enter the path to the cdata.jdbc.freshbooks.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
5. Right-click the connection and then click Retrieve Schema.
6. Click Next with the default options to select the tables you want to import.
7. Finish the wizard with the default options.

Output the Clients Table to a Flat File

You can follow the procedure below to transfer the Clients table to a flat file output component:

1. In the Table Schemas node, drag the tables to the workspace.
2. In the dialog that is displayed, select the tJDBCInput component.
3. Next, drag a tFileOutputDelimited component from the Business Intelligence tab of the Palette into the workspace.
4. Right-click the Clients tJDBCInput component and drag a vector to the output file.

Run the project to transfer the data.