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

Connect to Freshdesk 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.

   FreshDesk makes use of basic authentication. To connect to data, set the following connection properties:

   • Domain: Set this to the domain associated with your FreshDesk account. For example, in your URL: https://my_domain.freshdesk.com.
   • APIKey: Set this to the API key associated with your FreshDesk account. To retrieve your API key, Log into your support Portal -> Click on profile picture in the top right corner -> profile settings page. The API key will be available below the change password section to the right.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.freshdesk.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/freshdesk" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.freshdesk.FreshDeskDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:freshdesk:Domain=MyDomain;APIKey=myAPIKey;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

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

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

    Freshdesk data JSP
    jdbc/FreshDesk
    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/FreshDesk");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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