Feed BambooHR Data into FineReport

The CData JDBC Driver for BambooHR fully implements the JDBC standard and can provide BambooHR data connectivity to a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and custom applications. In this article, we explain how to set BambooHR data as JDBC data source in FineReport and view BambooHR data as a table in the Report Designer.

Set Up a JDBC Data Source of BambooHR Data

Follow the instruction below to set BambooHR data as a FineReport database connection.

1. Copy the cdata.jdbc.api.jar file from the lib folder in the CData JDBC Driver for BambooHR installation directory to the lib folder of the FineReport installation directory. You will need to copy the cdata.jdbc.api.lic file as well.
2. From the Server tab, select Define Data Connection, click to add a new connection, and click JDBC.

Next we will set up the data connection definition in the window.

1. Database: Others
2. JDBC Driver: cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
3. URL: A standard JDBC connection string using semicolon-separated connection properties.

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the BambooHR Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\bamboohr.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for BambooHR (see below).

   BambooHR API Profile Settings

   In order to authenticate to BambooHR, you'll need to provide your API Key. To generate an API key, log in and click your name in the upper right-hand corner of any page to get to the user context menu. If you have sufficient permissions, there will be an "API Keys" option in that menu to go to the page, where you can create a new API Key. Additionally, you will need to set the Domain, found in the domain name of your BambooHR account. For example if your BambooHR account is acmeinc.bamboohr.com, then the Domain should be 'acmeinc'. Set both the API Key and Domain in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

   A typical JDBC URL is below:

   jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\BambooHR.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=acmeinc;APIKey=your_api_key';
4. Click Connection pool attributes and set Test before getting connections to No.

Click Test connection to ensure you have configured the connection properly. With the connection to BambooHR set up, you can use it as FineReport data source.

Select BambooHR Data in the Report Designer.

1. Click to add a new template data set and select DB query to open the database query window.
2. Choose the JDBC connection that you created from the dropdown list.
3. The BambooHR entities will appear as tables on the left pane.
4. Write a SELECT statement for the BambooHR data tables and columns that you want to load.
5. Click preview and data is shown as table.

With these simple steps, BambooHR can be used as a JDBC data source in FineReport.