Integrate with Facebook Ads Data in JReport Designer

The CData JDBC Driver for Facebook Ads data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports as if Facebook Ads were a relational database, allowing you to query Facebook Ads data using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to connect to Facebook Ads data as a JDBC data source and create reports based on Facebook Ads data in JReport Designer.

Connect to Facebook Ads Data

1. Edit C:\JReport\Designer\bin\setenv.bat to add the location of the JAR file to the ADDCLASSPATH variable:

   ...
   set ADDCLASSPATH=%JAVAHOME%\lib\tools.jar;C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for Facebook Ads 2016\lib\cdata.jdbc.facebookads.jar;
   ...
   

2. Create a new data source by clicking File New Data Source.
3. In the resulting dialog, create a name for the data source (CData JDBC Driver for Facebook Ads), select JDBC, and click OK.
4. In the Get JDBC Connection Information dialog you will configure your connection to the JDBC driver:
   • Driver: Be sure that the Driver box is checked and fill in the name of the class for the driver:

     cdata.jdbc.facebookads.FacebookAdsDriver

   • URL: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:facebookads: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     Most tables require user authentication as well as application authentication. Facebook uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate to Facebook, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Facebook.

     See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.facebookads.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.)
     

     When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:facebookads:InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

   • User: The username to authenticate with; typically left blank.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with; typically left blank.
   👁 Configuring the connection to the JDBC Driver (Salesforce is shown.)
   

5. In the Add Table dialog, select the tables you wish to include in your report (or in future reports using this data source) and click Add.

   👁 Adding Tables. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

   Click Done once the dialog has completed loading the tables.

6. In the Catalog Browser, you can create the queries that you will use to populate your reports. You can do this now, or after you create your report. In either case, expand () the data source (CData JDBC Driver for Facebook Ads), right-click on Queries, and select Add Query. 👁 Adding a query for data to be used in the report. (Salesforce is shown.)
   
7. In the Add Table/View/Query dialog, expand () the JDBC URL and Tables and select the table(s) you wish to use in the query and click OK. 👁 Selecting a table for the query. (Salesforce is shown.)
   
8. In the Query Editor dialog, you can select the columns you wish to include or simply click the SQL button and manually input your own query. For example:

   SELECT AccountId, Name FROM AdAccounts WHERE Name = 'Acct Name'
   

   👁 Editing the query. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

   With the query built, click OK to close the Query Editor dialog. At this point you are ready to add Facebook Ads data to a new or existing report.

   NOTE: Now that the query is built, you can create a Business View based on the query. With a Business View, you can create Web reports or library components based on the query. For more information on this, refer to the JReport tutorials.

Add Facebook Ads Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Facebook Ads data.

1. Create a new report (File New Page Report) or open the Chart Wizard for an existing report.
2. Select the Query (or create a new one; see above).
👁 Selecting the query to use. (Salesforce is shown.)

3. Assign a Category and Value for the chart from the columns in your Query and click Finish.
👁 Assigning columns to define the chart. (Salesforce is shown.)

4. Click the View tab for your report to see the chart.