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

Create a DAO for the Freshservice AgentGroups 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 MyAgentGroupsDAO {
  //request specific data from Freshservice (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Name FROM AgentGroups WHERE Name = :name")
  String findNameByName(@Bind("name") String name);

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

Open a Connection to Freshservice

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

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

Freshservice API Profile Settings

Obtain your API Key from Profile Settings in the top-right corner of Freshservice. Your Domain is the subdomain from your account URL.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Freshservice.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Domain=your_subdomain';

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\Freshservice.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Domain=your_subdomain';");
MyAgentGroupsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyAgentGroupsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Freshservice Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String name = dao.findNameByName("Support Team");
System.out.println(name);

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