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

Create a DAO for the ShipEngine BatchErrors 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 MyBatchErrorsDAO {
  //request specific data from ShipEngine (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Error FROM BatchErrors WHERE BatchId = :batchId")
  String findErrorByBatchId(@Bind("batchId") String batchId);

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

Open a Connection to ShipEngine

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

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

ShipEngine API Profile Settings

Retrieve your ShipEngine API Key from the Dashboard at app.shipengine.com under API Management.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

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

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read ShipEngine Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String error = dao.findErrorByBatchId("batch_123");
System.out.println(error);

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