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

Create a DAO for the Google Forms Forms 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 MyFormsDAO {
  //request specific data from Google Forms (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Title FROM Forms WHERE CreationTime = :creationTime")
  String findTitleByCreationTime(@Bind("creationTime") String creationTime);

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

Open a Connection to Google Forms

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

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

Google Forms API Profile Settings

In the Google Cloud Console, create a project, enable the Google Forms API, and create OAuth 2.0 credentials to obtain your Client ID and Client Secret.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\GoogleForms.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;

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\GoogleForms.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;");
MyFormsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyFormsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Google Forms Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String title = dao.findTitleByCreationTime("2026-01-15");
System.out.println(title);

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