Analyze LINE Data in R via JDBC

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use standard R functions and the development environment of your choice to analyze LINE data with the CData JDBC Driver for LINE.

Access LINE data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for LINE and the RJDBC package to work with remote LINE data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to LINE and visualize LINE data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:


library(RJDBC)

Connect to LINE as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to LINE as a JDBC data source:

  • Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
  • Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for LINE:


driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.api.jar", identifier.quote = "'") 

You can now use DBI functions to connect to LINE and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

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

LINE API Profile Settings

The LINE Messaging API uses Channel Access Token authentication. To obtain a Channel Access Token:

  1. Log in to the LINE Developers Console at https://developers.line.biz
  2. Select your provider and open your Messaging API channel.
  3. Navigate to the Messaging API tab.
  4. Under Channel access token, click Issue to generate a long-lived token.
  5. Copy the generated token.

After obtaining your Channel Access Token, set the following connection properties:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

  • APIKey: Set this to your LINE Channel Access Token.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the LINE 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.

Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:


conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\LINE.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_channel_access_token;';AuthScheme=APIKey;")

Schema Discovery

The driver models LINE APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:


dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the LINE API:


replymessagedelivery <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT DeliveryDate, DeliveredCount FROM ReplyMessageDelivery WHERE DeliveryDate = '20240115'")

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:


View(replymessagedelivery)

Plot LINE Data

You can now analyze LINE data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:


par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(replymessagedelivery$DeliveredCount, main="LINE ReplyMessageDelivery", names.arg = replymessagedelivery$DeliveryDate, horiz=TRUE)
A basic bar plot. (Salesforce is shown.)

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from LINE with the API Driver

Connect to LINE