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

Connect to Postmark 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.

   Using API Key Authentication

   Postmark uses server API tokens to authenticate requests. Each Postmark server has its own API token, which controls access to messages, bounces, templates, and statistics associated with that server.

   To obtain your Server API Token, log in to your Postmark account and navigate to the server you want to connect to. Go to API Tokens under the server settings and copy the token labeled Server API token.

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

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
   • APIKey: Set this to your Postmark Server API Token. This value is sent as the X-Postmark-Server-Token header on every request.

   Example connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\Postmark.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your-server-api-token"
   

   Connecting to Postmark

   Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to Postmark and query data from any of the available tables such as OutboundMessages, Bounces, and Templates.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   You can see the JDBC URL specified in the resource definition below.

   <Resource name="jdbc/api" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Postmark.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your-server-api-token"" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

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

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

    Postmark data JSP
    jdbc/API
    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/API");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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