Learn more
 

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Printful with the API Driver

Connect to Printful

In this article

Related articles

Create a Data Access Object for Printful Data using JDBI


A brief overview of creating a SQL Object API for Printful data in 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 Printful integrates connectivity to live Printful data in Java applications. By pairing these technologies, you gain simple, programmatic access to Printful data. This article walks through building a basic Data Access Object (DAO) and the accompanying code to read Printful data.

Create a DAO for the Printful Orders 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 MyOrdersDAO { //request specific data from Printful (String type is used for simplicity) @SqlQuery("SELECT Store FROM Orders WHERE Status = :status") String findStoreByStatus(@Bind("status") String status); /* * close with no args is used to close the connection */ void close(); }

Open a Connection to Printful

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

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

Printful API Profile Settings

In order to authenticate to Printful, you'll need to provide your API Key. To get your API Key, first go to 'Settings' then 'Stores'. Select the Store you would like to connect to, then click the 'Add API Access' button to generate an API Key. Set the API Key in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Printful.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=my_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\Printful.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=my_api_key';"); MyOrdersDAO dao = dbi.open(MyOrdersDAO.class); //do stuff with the DAO dao.close();

Read Printful Data

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

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

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