Configure the CData JDBC Driver for FreshBooks in a Connection Pool in Tomcat

The CData JDBC Drivers support standard JDBC interfaces to integrate with Web applications running on the JVM. This article details how to connect to FreshBooks data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to FreshBooks Data through a Connection Pool in Tomcat

1. Copy the CData JAR and CData .lic file to $CATALINA_HOME/lib. The CData JAR is located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
2. Add a definition of the resource to the context. Specify the JDBC URL here.

   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.

   You can see the JDBC URL specified in the resource definition below.

   <Resource name="jdbc/freshbooks" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.freshbooks.FreshBooksDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:freshbooks:CompanyName=CData;Token=token;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />

   To allow a single application to access FreshBooks data, add the code above to the context.xml in the application's META-INF directory.

   For a shared resource configuration, add the code above to the context.xml located in $CATALINA_BASE/conf. A shared resource configuration provides connectivity to FreshBooks for all applications.

3. Add a reference to the resource to the web.xml for the application. FreshBooks data JSP jdbc/FreshBooks javax.sql.DataSource Container
4. Initialize connections from the connection pool: Context initContext = new InitialContext(); Context envContext = (Context)initContext.lookup("java:/comp/env"); DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup("jdbc/FreshBooks"); Connection conn = ds.getConnection();

More Tomcat Integration

The steps above show how to connect to FreshBooks data in a simple connection pooling scenario. For more use cases and information, see the JNDI Datasource How-To in the Tomcat documentation.