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Connect to live data from Zenefits with the API Driver

Connect to Zenefits

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Create a Data Access Object for Zenefits Data using JDBI


A brief overview of creating a SQL Object API for Zenefits data in JDBI.

JDBI is a SQL convenience library for Java that exposes two different style APIs, a fluent style and a SQL object style. The CData JDBC Driver for Zenefits integrates connectivity to live Zenefits data in Java applications. By pairing these technologies, you gain simple, programmatic access to Zenefits data. This article walks through building a basic Data Access Object (DAO) and the accompanying code to read Zenefits data.

Create a DAO for the Zenefits People Entity

The interface below declares the desired behavior for the SQL object to create a single method for each SQL statement to be implemented.

public interface MyPeopleDAO { //request specific data from Zenefits (String type is used for simplicity) @SqlQuery("SELECT Title FROM People WHERE Status = :status") String findTitleByStatus(@Bind("status") String status); /* * close with no args is used to close the connection */ void close(); }

Open a Connection to Zenefits

Collect the necessary connection properties and construct the appropriate JDBC URL for connecting to Zenefits.

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

Zenefits API Profile Settings

In order to authenticate to Zenefits, you'll need to provide your API Key. To create an API Key, from your account head over to Company Overview > Custom Integrations, then besides Rest API Access select Add Token. Set the API Key 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 Zenefits 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.

A connection string for Zenefits will typically look like the following:

jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Zenefits.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=my_api_token';

Use the configured JDBC URL to obtain an instance of the DAO interface. The particular method shown below will open a handle bound to the instance, so the instance needs to be closed explicitly to release the handle and the bound JDBC connection.

DBI dbi = new DBI("jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Zenefits.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=my_api_token';"); MyPeopleDAO dao = dbi.open(MyPeopleDAO.class); //do stuff with the DAO dao.close();

Read Zenefits Data

With the connection open to Zenefits, simply call the previously defined method to retrieve data from the People entity in Zenefits.

//disply the result of our 'find' method String title = dao.findTitleByStatus("active"); System.out.println(title);

Since the JDBI library is able to work with JDBC connections, you can easily produce a SQL Object API for Zenefits by integrating with the CData JDBC Driver for Zenefits. Download a free trial and work with live Zenefits data in custom Java applications today.