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

Connect to Google Sheets 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.

   You can connect to a spreadsheet by providing authentication to Google and then setting the Spreadsheet connection property to the name or feed link of the spreadsheet. If you want to view a list of information about the spreadsheets in your Google Drive, execute a query to the Spreadsheets view after you authenticate.

   ClientLogin (username/password authentication) has been officially deprecated since April 20, 2012 and is now no longer available. Instead, use the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard. To access Google APIs on behalf on individual users, you can use the embedded credentials or you can register your own OAuth app.

   OAuth also enables you to use a service account to connect on behalf of users in a Google Apps domain. To authenticate with a service account, register an application to obtain the OAuth JWT values.

   See the Getting Started chapter in the help documentation to connect to Google Sheets from different types of accounts: Google accounts, Google Apps accounts, and accounts using two-step verification.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.googlesheets.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/googlesheets" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.googlesheets.GoogleSheetsDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:googlesheets:Spreadsheet=MySheet;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access Google Sheets 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 Google Sheets for all applications.

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

    Google Sheets data JSP
    jdbc/GoogleSheets
    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/GoogleSheets");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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