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

Connect to TaxJar 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.

   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.

   👁 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/taxjar" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.taxjar.TaxJarDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:taxjar:APIKey=3bb04218ef8t80efdf1739abf7257144;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

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

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

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

More Tomcat Integration

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