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

Create a DAO for the PDFMonkey CurrentUser 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 MyCurrentUserDAO {
  //request specific data from PDFMonkey (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT  FROM CurrentUser WHERE  = :")
  String findBy(@Bind("") String );

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

Open a Connection to PDFMonkey

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

Using API Key Authentication

PdfMonkey uses API key authentication. To obtain an API key:

1. Log in to your PdfMonkey account at https://app.pdfmonkey.io
2. Navigate to your account settings
3. Open the API Key page
4. Copy your API key

After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

• APIKey: Set this to your PdfMonkey API key.

Example Connection String

Profile=C:\profiles\PdfMonkey.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key"

Connecting to PdfMonkey

Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to PdfMonkey and query data from any of the available tables such as CurrentUser, DocumentCards, Documents, DocumentTemplateCards, and DocumentTemplates.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\PdfMonkey.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;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\PdfMonkey.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key"");
MyCurrentUserDAO dao = dbi.open(MyCurrentUserDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read PDFMonkey Data

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

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

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