Configure the CData JDBC Driver for BigCommerce in a Connection Pool in Tomcat

The CData JDBC Drivers support standard JDBC interfaces to integrate with Web applications running on the JVM. This article details how to connect to BigCommerce data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to BigCommerce Data through a Connection Pool in Tomcat

1. Copy the CData JAR and CData .lic file to $CATALINA_HOME/lib. The CData JAR is located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
2. Add a definition of the resource to the context. Specify the JDBC URL here.

   BigCommerce authentication is based on the standard OAuth flow. To authenticate, you must initially create an app via the Big Commerce developer platform where you can obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL. These three parameters will be set as connection properties to your driver.

   Additionally, in order to connect to your BigCommerce Store, you will need your StoreId. To find your Store Id please follow these steps:

   1. Log in to your BigCommerce account.
   2. From the Home Page, select Advanced Settings > API Accounts.
   3. Click Create API Account.
   4. A text box named API Path will appear on your screen.
   5. Inside you can see a URL of the following structure: https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/{Store Id}/v3.
   6. As demonstrated above, your Store Id will be between the 'stores/' and '/v3' path paramters.
   7. Once you have retrieved your Store Id you can either click Cancel or proceed in creating an API Account in case you do not have one already.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the BigCommerce JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.bigcommerce.jar
   

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)
   

   You can see the JDBC URL specified in the resource definition below.

   <Resource name="jdbc/bigcommerce" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.bigcommerce.BigCommerceDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:bigcommerce:OAuthClientId=YourClientId; OAuthClientSecret=YourClientSecret; StoreId='YourStoreID'; CallbackURL='http://localhost:33333';InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access BigCommerce data, add the code above to the context.xml in the application's META-INF directory.

   For a shared resource configuration, add the code above to the context.xml located in $CATALINA_BASE/conf. A shared resource configuration provides connectivity to BigCommerce for all applications.

3. Add a reference to the resource to the web.xml for the application.

    BigCommerce data JSP
    jdbc/BigCommerce
    javax.sql.DataSource
    Container
   
   

4. Initialize connections from the connection pool:

   Context initContext = new InitialContext();
   Context envContext = (Context)initContext.lookup("java:/comp/env");
   DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup("jdbc/BigCommerce");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

The steps above show how to connect to BigCommerce data in a simple connection pooling scenario. For more use cases and information, see the JNDI Datasource How-To in the Tomcat documentation.