Access BambooHR Data in Mule Applications Using the CData JDBC Driver

The CData API Driver for JDBC connects BambooHR data to Mule applications enabling read functionality with familiar SQL queries. The JDBC Driver allows users to easily create Mule applications to backup, transform, report, and analyze BambooHR data.

This article demonstrates how to use the CData API Driver for JDBC inside of a Mule project to create a Web interface for BambooHR data. The application created allows you to request BambooHR data using an HTTP request and have the results returned as JSON. The exact same procedure outlined below can be used with any CData JDBC Driver to create a Web interface for the 200+ available data sources.

1. Create a new Mule Project in Anypoint Studio.
2. Add an HTTP Connector to the Message Flow.
3. Configure the address for the HTTP Connector.
4. Add a Database Select Connector to the same flow, after the HTTP Connector.
5. Create a new Connection (or edit an existing one) and configure the properties.
   • Set Connection to "Generic Connection"
   • Select the CData JDBC Driver JAR file in the Required Libraries section (e.g. cdata.jdbc.api.jar).
   • Set the URL to the connection string for BambooHR

     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.

   • Set the Driver class name to cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.
   • Click Test Connection.
6. Set the SQL Query Text to a SQL query to request BambooHR data. For example: SELECT Id, DisplayName FROM Employees WHERE Department = 'Sales'
7. Add a Transform Message Component to the flow.
8. Set the Output script to the following to convert the payload to JSON:

   %dw 2.0
   output application/json
   ---
   payload
           

9. To view your BambooHR data, navigate to the address you configured for the HTTP Connector (localhost:8081 by default): http://localhost:8081. The BambooHR data is available as JSON in your Web browser and any other tools capable of consuming JSON endpoints.

At this point, you have a simple Web interface for working with BambooHR data (as JSON data) in custom apps and a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools. Download a free, 30 day trial of the JDBC Driver for BambooHR and see the CData difference in your Mule Applications today.