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

Create a DAO for the Front Channels 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 MyChannelsDAO {
  //request specific data from Front (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Name FROM Channels WHERE Type = :type")
  String findNameByType(@Bind("type") String type);

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

Open a Connection to Front

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

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

Front API Profile Settings

Generate an API key in Front by navigating to Settings > Plugins & API > API.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Front.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';

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\Front.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';");
MyChannelsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyChannelsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Front Data

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

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

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