Analyze TaxJar Data in R via JDBC

Access TaxJar data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for TaxJar and the RJDBC package to work with remote TaxJar data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to TaxJar and visualize TaxJar data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RJDBC)

Connect to TaxJar as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to TaxJar as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.taxjar.TaxJarDriver
• Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for TaxJar:

driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.taxjar.TaxJarDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.taxjar.jar", identifier.quote = "'") 

You can now use DBI functions to connect to TaxJar and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

To authenticate to the TaxJar API, first obtain the API Key from the TaxJar UI.

NOTE: the API is available only for Professional and Premium TaxJar plans.

If you already have a Professional or Premium plan you can find the API Key by logging in the TaxJar UI and navigating to Account -> TaxJar API. After obtaining the API Key, you can set it in the APIKey connection property.

Additional Notes

• By default, the CData connector will retrieve data of the last 3 months in cases where the entity support date range filtering. You can set StartDate to specify the minimum creation date of the data retrieved.
• If the API Key has been created for a sandbox API account please set UseSandbox to true, but not all endpoints will work as expected. For more information, refer to the TaxJar developer documentation.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

java -jar cdata.jdbc.taxjar.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:taxjar:APIKey=3bb04218ef8t80efdf1739abf7257144;")

Schema Discovery

The driver models TaxJar APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the TaxJar API:

orders <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT TransactionID, UserID FROM Orders WHERE TransactionID = '123'")

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(orders)

Plot TaxJar Data

You can now analyze TaxJar data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(orders$UserID, main="TaxJar Orders", names.arg = orders$TransactionID, horiz=TRUE)