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

Create a DAO for the SageHR ApplicantActions 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 MyApplicantActionsDAO {
  //request specific data from SageHR (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Action FROM ApplicantActions WHERE ApplicantId = :applicantId")
  String findActionByApplicantId(@Bind("applicantId") String applicantId);

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

Open a Connection to SageHR

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

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

SageHR API Profile Settings

Navigate to Settings > Integrations > API in your SageHR account and click Enable API Access to obtain your API key. Your Subdomain is the prefix of your SageHR URL.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\SageHR.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Subdomain=your_subdomain';

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\SageHR.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Subdomain=your_subdomain';");
MyApplicantActionsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyApplicantActionsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read SageHR Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String action = dao.findActionByApplicantId("12345");
System.out.println(action);

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