Integrate Harvest Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC driver for Harvest data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to Harvest data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on Harvest data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.

3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new Harvest connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

   • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:api: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

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

     Harvest API Profile Settings

     To authenticate to Harvest, you can use either Token authentication or the OAuth standard. Use Basic authentication to connect to your own data. Use OAuth to allow other users to connect to their data.

     Using Token Authentication

     To use Token Authentication, set the APIKey to your Harvest Personal Access Token in the ProfileSettings connection property. In addition to APIKey, set your AccountId in ProfileSettings to connect.

     Using OAuth Authentication

     First, register an OAuth2 application with Harvest. The application can be created from the "Developers" section of Harvest ID.

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

     • ProfileSettings: Set your AccountId in ProfileSettings.
     • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
     • OAuthClientId: Set this to the client ID that you specified in your app settings.
     • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret that you specified in your app settings.
     • CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI that you specified in your app settings.
     • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage how the driver obtains and refreshes the OAuthAccessToken.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Harvest.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=my_personal_key;AccountId=_your_account_id';
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add Harvest Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Harvest data.

1. Add the Harvest source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

   SELECT Id, ClientName FROM Invoices WHERE State = 'open'
3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the Invoices table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.