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

Create a DAO for the MessageBird Contacts 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 MyContactsDAO {
  //request specific data from MessageBird (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT FirstName FROM Contacts WHERE FirstName = :firstName")
  String findFirstNameByFirstName(@Bind("firstName") String firstName);

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

Open a Connection to MessageBird

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

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

MessageBird API Profile Settings

Retrieve your private API Key from the MessageBird dashboard under Developers > API Access.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\MessageBird.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\MessageBird.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';");
MyContactsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyContactsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read MessageBird Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String firstName = dao.findFirstNameByFirstName("John");
System.out.println(firstName);

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