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

Create a DAO for the Shortcut Categories 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 MyCategoriesDAO {
  //request specific data from Shortcut (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Name FROM Categories WHERE IsArchived = :isArchived")
  String findNameByIsArchived(@Bind("isArchived") String isArchived);

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

Open a Connection to Shortcut

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

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

Shortcut API Profile Settings

Log into your Shortcut account, navigate to Settings > API Tokens, and click Generate Token.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

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

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Shortcut Data

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

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

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