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

Create a DAO for the Yelp AutocompleteBusinesses 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 MyAutocompleteBusinessesDAO {
  //request specific data from Yelp (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Name FROM AutocompleteBusinesses WHERE Name = :name")
  String findNameByName(@Bind("name") String name);

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

Open a Connection to Yelp

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

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

Yelp API Profile Settings

Create an app at yelp.com/developers/v3/manage_app to automatically generate a private API token.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

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

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Yelp Data

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

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

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