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

Create a DAO for the Drift Contacts 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 MyContactsDAO {
 //request specific data from Drift (String type is used for simplicity)
 @SqlQuery("SELECT DisplayName FROM Contacts WHERE LastName = :lastName")
 String findDisplayNameByLastName(@Bind("lastName") String lastName);

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

Open a Connection to Drift

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

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

Drift API Profile Settings

Drift uses OAuth-based authentication.

You must first register an application here: https://dev.drift.com. Your app will be assigned a client ID and a client secret. Set these in your connection string via the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret properties. More information on setting up an OAuth application can be found at https://devdocs.drift.com/docs/.

After setting the following options in the ProfileSettings connection property, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id that is specified in your app settings.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to Client Secret that is specified in your app settings.
• CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app settings.
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Drift.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\Drift.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;");
MyContactsDAO dao = dbi.open(MyContactsDAO.class);

//do stuff with the DAO

dao.close();

Read Drift Data

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

//disply the result of our 'find' method
String displayName = dao.findDisplayNameByLastName("Stark");
System.out.println(displayName);

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