Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Discourse 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 Discourse data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to Discourse 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.

   The Discourse API uses API Key authentication.

   Using API Key Authentication

   Discourse requires API Key and Username for authentication. API Keys are generated in the Discourse Admin panel under the API section. You can create user-specific API keys or all-users API keys. Once you have obtained the API Key, set it along with the Domain and Username in the ProfileSettings connection property.

   Example Connection string

   Profile=C:\profiles\Discourse.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=forum.example.com;APIKey=your_api_key;Username=your_username;'AuthScheme=APIKey;
   

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Discourse 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.

   👁 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/api" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Discourse.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=forum.example.com;APIKey=your_api_key;Username=your_username;'AuthScheme=APIKey;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access Discourse 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 Discourse for all applications.

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

    Discourse data JSP
    jdbc/API
    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/API");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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