Connect to Hacker News Data in RapidMiner

This article shows how you can easily integrate the CData JDBC driver for Hacker News into your processes in RapidMiner. This article uses the CData JDBC Driver for Hacker News to transfer Hacker News data to a process in RapidMiner.

Connect to Hacker News in RapidMiner as a JDBC Data Source

You can follow the procedure below to establish a JDBC connection to Hacker News:

1. Add a new database driver for Hacker News: Click Connections -> Manage Database Drivers.
2. In the resulting wizard, click the Add button and enter a name for the connection.
3. Enter the prefix for the JDBC URL:

   jdbc:api:
   

4. Enter the path to the cdata.jdbc.api.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
5. Enter the driver class:

   cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
   

   👁 The JDBC driver configuration. (Salesforce is shown.)
   
6. Create a new Hacker News connection: Click Connections -> Manage Database Connections.
7. Enter a name for your connection.
8. For Database System, select the Hacker News driver you configured previously.
9. Enter your connection string in the Host box.

   Connecting to HackerNews

   The HackerNews API (powered by Firebase) is a public API that requires no authentication. You can connect and query data immediately without any credentials.

   After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to None.

   Example connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None
   

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)
   

   A typical connection string is below:

   Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None
   

10. Enter your username and password if necessary. 👁 The connection to the JDBC data source. (Salesforce is shown.)
    

You can now use your Hacker News connection with the various RapidMiner operators in your process. To retrieve Hacker News data, drag the Retrieve operator from the Operators view. 👁 A Retrieve operation to select data. (Salesforce is shown.)
With the Retrieve operator selected, you can then define which table to retrieve in the Parameters view by clicking the folder icon next to the "repository entry." In the resulting Repository Browser, you can expand your connection node to select the desired example set.

Finally, wire the output to the Retrieve process to a result, and run the process to see the Hacker News data.