Integrate with live JSON Services in Jitterbit

Mohsin Turki
Mohsin Turki
Technical Marketing Engineer
Use CData Connect AI to connect to and integrate live JSON services in Jitterbit.

Jitterbit is an enterprise iPaaS (integration platform as a service) that lets you streamline your data workflows. When paired with CData Connect AI, Jitterbit gets access to live JSON services. This article demonstrates how to connect to JSON using Connect AI and integrate with live JSON services in Jitterbit.

CData Connect AI provides a pure OData interface for JSON, allowing you to query data from JSON without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to JSON, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested JSON services quickly.

Configure JSON Connectivity for Jitterbit

To work with JSON services from Jitterbit, we need to connect to JSON from Connect AI, provide user access to the connection, and create a Workspace for the JSON services.

Connect to JSON from Connect AI

CData Connect AI uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
  2. Select "JSON" from the Add Connection panel
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to JSON.

    See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models JSON APIs as bidirectional database tables and JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

    After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

    The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

    • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your JSON data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
    • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
    • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

    See the Modeling JSON Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add JSON Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create.
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Configure JSON Endpoints for Jitterbit

After connecting to JSON, create a workspace for your desired table(s).

  1. Navigate to the Workspaces page and click Add to create a new Workspace (or select an existing workspace).
  2. Click Add to add new assets to the Workspace.
  3. Select the JSON connection (e.g. JSON1) and click Next.
  4. Select the table(s) you wish to work with and click Confirm.
  5. Make note of the OData Service URL for your workspace, e.g. https://cloud.cdata.com/api/odata/{workspace_name}

With the connection, PAT, and Workspace configured, you are ready to connect to JSON services from Jitterbit.

Connect to JSON from Jitterbit using Connect AI

To establish a connection from Jitterbit to CData Connect AI using the OData protocol, follow these steps.

  1. Log into Jitterbit.
  2. Create a project in Cloud Studio and provide a workspace environment for it.
  3. click Sources and enter OData in the search bar.
  4. Select the OData connector.
  5. Enter the OData connection properties.
    • Connection Name: enter a connection name.
    • OData Metadata URL: enter https://cloud.cdata.com/api/odata/{workspace_name}.
    • Authentication: select Basic Auth.
    • User Name: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected].
    • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page.
  6. Click Test to test the connection, and then click Save Changes.
  7. Choose the operation you want to perform and drag it to the workflow in your project.
  8. Double-click the query operation to see all the tables and derived views available in your OData endpoint.
  9. Select a table and configure the query.

You can now transform and integrate live JSON services in Jitterbit.

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To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Jitterbit, try CData Connect AI today!

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