How to connect to Hacker News Data from IntelliJ

The CData JDBC Driver for Hacker News enables you to access Hacker News as a JDBC data source, providing integration with rapid development tools in IDEs. This article shows how to use the data source configuration wizard to connect to Hacker News data in IntelliJ.

Create a JBDC Data Source for Hacker News

Follow the steps below to add the driver JAR and define connection properties required to connect to Hacker News data.

1. In the Data Sources window, right-click and then click Add Data Source -> DB Data Source.

2. In the Data Source Properties dialog that appears, the following properties are required:

   • JDBC Driver Files: Click the button next to this menu to add the JDBC Driver file cdata.jdbc.api.jar, located in the installation directory.
   • JDBC Driver Class: In this menu, select cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver from the list.

   • Database URL: Enter the connection URL in the JDBC URL property. The URL must start with jdbc:api: and includes connection properties separated with semicolons.

     Connecting to HackerNews

     The HackerNews API (powered by Firebase) is a public API that requires no authentication. You can connect and query data immediately without any credentials.

     After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

     • AuthScheme: Set this to None.

     Example connection string:

     Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None
     

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Hacker News 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 typical JDBC URL is the following:

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None

Edit and Save Hacker News Data

To discover schema information, right-click the data source you just created and click Refresh Tables. To query a table, right-click it and then click Open Tables Editor.