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

Create a DAO for the ZohoPeople Clients 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 MyClientsDAO {
  //request specific data from ZohoPeople (String type is used for simplicity)
  @SqlQuery("SELECT Name FROM Clients WHERE Country = :country")
  String findNameByCountry(@Bind("country") String country);

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

Open a Connection to ZohoPeople

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

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

ZohoPeople API Profile Settings

Register an OAuth application in the Zoho Developer Console as a server-based application to obtain your Client ID and Client Secret.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\ZohoPeople.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;

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\ZohoPeople.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;");
MyClientsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyClientsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read ZohoPeople Data

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

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

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