Access Cvent Data in Mule Applications Using the CData JDBC Driver

The CData JDBC Driver for Cvent connects Cvent data to Mule applications enabling read , write, update, and delete functionality with familiar SQL queries. The JDBC Driver allows users to easily create Mule applications to backup, transform, report, and analyze Cvent data.

This article demonstrates how to use the CData JDBC Driver for Cvent inside of a Mule project to create a Web interface for Cvent data. The application created allows you to request Cvent data using an HTTP request and have the results returned as JSON. The exact same procedure outlined below can be used with any CData JDBC Driver to create a Web interface for the hundreds of available data sources.

1. Create a new Mule Project in Anypoint Studio.
2. Add an HTTP Connector to the Message Flow.
3. Configure the address for the HTTP Connector. 👁 Add and Configure the HTTP Connector
   
4. Add a Database Select Connector to the same flow, after the HTTP Connector.
5. Create a new Connection (or edit an existing one) and configure the properties.
   • Set Connection to "Generic Connection"
   • Select the CData JDBC Driver JAR file in the Required Libraries section (e.g. cdata.jdbc.cvent.jar). 👁 Adding the JAR file (Salesforce is shown).
     
   • Set the URL to the connection string for Cvent

     Before you can authenticate to Cvent, you must create a workspace and an OAuth application.

     Creating a Workspace

     To create a workspace:

     1. Sign into Cvent and navigate to App Switcher (the blue button in the upper right corner of the page) >> Admin.
     2. In the Admin menu, navigate to Integrations >> REST API.
     3. A new tab launches for Developer Management. Click on Manage API Access in the new tab.
     4. Create a Workspace and name it. Select the scopes you would like your developers to have access to. Scopes control what data domains the developer can access.
        • Choose All to allow developers to choose any scope, and any future scopes added to the REST API.
        • Choose Custom to limit the scopes developers can choose for their OAuth apps to selected scopes. To access all tables exposed by the driver, you need to set the following scopes:

          event/attendees:read	event/attendees:write	event/contacts:read
          event/contacts:write	event/custom-fields:read	event/custom-fields:write
          event/events:read	event/events:write	event/sessions:delete
          event/sessions:read	event/sessions:write	event/speakers:delete
          event/speakers:read	event/speakers:write	budget/budget-items:read
          budget/budget-items:write	exhibitor/exhibitors:read	exhibitor/exhibitors:write
          survey/surveys:read	survey/surveys:write

     Creating an OAuth Application

     After you have set up a Workspace and invited them, developers can sign up and create a custom OAuth app. See the Creating a Custom OAuth Application section in the Help documentation for more information.

     Connecting to Cvent

     After creating an OAuth application, set the following connection properties to connect to Cvent:

     • InitiateOAuth: GETANDREFRESH. Used to automatically get and refresh the OAuthAccessToken.
     • OAuthClientId: The Client ID associated with the OAuth application. You can find this on the Applications page in the Cvent Developer Portal.
     • OAuthClientSecret: The Client secret associated with the OAuth application. You can find this on the Applications page in the Cvent Developer Portal.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     		java -jar cdata.jdbc.cvent.jar
     		

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

   • Set the Driver class name to cdata.jdbc.cvent.CventDriver. 👁 A configured Database Connection (Salesforce is shown).
     
   • Click Test Connection.
6. Set the SQL Query Text to a SQL query to request Cvent data. For example:

   SELECT Id, Title FROM Events WHERE Virtual = 'true'

   👁 Configure the Select object (Salesforce is Shown)
   
7. Add a Transform Message Component to the flow.
8. Set the Output script to the following to convert the payload to JSON:

   %dw 2.0
   output application/json
   ---
   payload
    

   👁 Add the Transform Message Component to the Flow
   
9. To view your Cvent data, navigate to the address you configured for the HTTP Connector (localhost:8081 by default): http://localhost:8081. The Cvent data is available as JSON in your Web browser and any other tools capable of consuming JSON endpoints.

At this point, you have a simple Web interface for working with Cvent data (as JSON data) in custom apps and a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools. Download a free, 30 day trial of the JDBC Driver for Cvent and see the CData difference in your Mule Applications today.