Access FreshBooks Data in Mule Applications Using the CData JDBC Driver

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

This article demonstrates how to use the CData API Driver for JDBC inside of a Mule project to create a Web interface for FreshBooks data. The application created allows you to request FreshBooks 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.api.jar). 👁 Adding the JAR file (Salesforce is shown).
     
   • Set the URL to the connection string for FreshBooks

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

     FreshBooks API Profile Settings

     Register an OAuth application in your FreshBooks Developer Dashboard to obtain a Client ID and Client Secret, and configure the redirect URI to match your application's callback URL.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

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

   SELECT Id, InvoiceNumber FROM Invoices WHERE AccountId = 'your_account_id'

   👁 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 FreshBooks data, navigate to the address you configured for the HTTP Connector (localhost:8081 by default): http://localhost:8081. The FreshBooks 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 FreshBooks 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 FreshBooks and see the CData difference in your Mule Applications today.