DataStax Java Driver - Integration

Integration

This page contains various information on how to integrate the driver in your application.

Minimal project structure

We publish the driver to Maven central. Most modern build tools can download the dependency automatically.

Maven

Create the following 4 files:

$ find . -type f
./pom.xml
./src/main/resources/application.conf
./src/main/resources/logback.xml
./src/main/java/Main.java

Project descriptor

pom.xml is the Project Object Model that describes your application. We declare the dependencies, and tell Maven that we’re going to use Java 8:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>com.example.yourcompany</groupId>
  <artifactId>yourapp</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.datastax.oss</groupId>
      <artifactId>java-driver-core</artifactId>
      <version>4.0.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
      <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
      <version>1.2.3</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.8</source>
          <target>1.8</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

Application configuration

application.conf is not stricly necessary, but it illustrates an important point about the driver’s configuration: you override any of the driver’s default options here.

datastax-java-driver {
  basic.session-name = poc
}

In this case, we just specify a custom name for our session, it will appear in the logs.

Logging configuration

For this example, we choose Logback as our logging framework (we added the dependency in pom.xml). logback.xml configures it to send the driver’s INFO logs to the console.

<configuration>
  <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder>
      <pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n</pattern>
    </encoder>
  </appender>
  <root level="WARN">
    <appender-ref ref="STDOUT"/>
  </root>
  <logger name="com.datastax.oss.driver" level= "INFO"/>
</configuration>

Again, this is not strictly necessary: a truly minimal example could run without the Logback dependency, or this file; but the default behavior is a bit verbose.

Main class

Main.java is the canonical example introduced in our quick start; it connects to Cassandra, queries the server version and prints it:

import com.datastax.oss.driver.api.core.CqlSession;
import com.datastax.oss.driver.api.core.cql.ResultSet;

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try (CqlSession session = CqlSession.builder().build()) {
      ResultSet rs = session.execute("SELECT release_version FROM system.local");
      System.out.println(rs.one().getString(0));
    }
  }
}

Make sure you have a Cassandra instance running on 127.0.0.1:9042 (otherwise, you use CqlSession.builder().addContactPoint() to use a different address).

Running

To launch the program from the command line, use:

$ mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=Main

You should see output similar to:

...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building yourapp 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
... (at this point, Maven will download the dependencies the first time) 
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.6:resources (default-resources) @ yourapp ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] Copying 1 resource
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.5.1:compile (default-compile) @ yourapp ---
[INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date
[INFO]
[INFO] --- exec-maven-plugin:1.3.1:java (default-cli) @ yourapp ---
11:39:45.355 [Main.main()] INFO  c.d.o.d.i.c.DefaultMavenCoordinates - DataStax Java driver for Apache Cassandra(R) (com.datastax.oss:java-driver-core) version 4.0.1
11:39:45.648 [poc-admin-0] INFO  c.d.o.d.internal.core.time.Clock - Using native clock for microsecond precision
11:39:45.649 [poc-admin-0] INFO  c.d.o.d.i.c.metadata.MetadataManager - [poc] No contact points provided, defaulting to /127.0.0.1:9042
3.11.2
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 11.777 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2018-06-18T11:32:49-08:00
[INFO] Final Memory: 16M/277M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gradle

Initialize a new project with Gradle.

Modify build.gradle to add the dependencies:

group 'com.example.yourcompany'
version '1.0.0-SNAPSHOT'

apply plugin: 'java'

sourceCompatibility = 1.8

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile group: 'com.datastax.oss', name: 'java-driver-core', version: '4.0.1'
    compile group: 'ch.qos.logback', name: 'logback-classic', version: '1.2.3'
}

Then place application.conf, logback.xml and Main.java in the same locations, and with the same contents, as in the Maven example:

./src/main/resources/application.conf
./src/main/resources/logback.xml
./src/main/java/Main.java

Optionally, if you want to run from the command line, add the following at the end of build.gradle:

task execute(type:JavaExec) {
    main = 'Main'
    classpath = sourceSets.main.runtimeClasspath
}

Then launch with:

$ ./gradlew execute

You should see output similar to:

$ ./gradlew execute
:compileJava
:processResources
:classes
:execute
13:32:25.339 [main] INFO  c.d.o.d.i.c.DefaultMavenCoordinates - DataStax Java driver for Apache Cassandra(R) (com.datastax.oss:java-driver-core) version 4.0.1-alpha4-SNAPSHOT
13:32:25.682 [poc-admin-0] INFO  c.d.o.d.internal.core.time.Clock - Using native clock for microsecond precision
13:32:25.683 [poc-admin-0] INFO  c.d.o.d.i.c.metadata.MetadataManager - [poc] No contact points provided, defaulting to /127.0.0.1:9042
3.11.2

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Manually (from the binary tarball)

If your build tool can’t fetch dependencies from Maven central, we publish a binary tarball on the DataStax download server.

The driver and its dependencies must be in the compile-time classpath. Application resources, such as application.conf and logback.xml in our previous examples, must be in the runtime classpath.

Driver dependencies

The driver depends on a number of third-party libraries; some of those dependencies are opt-in, while others are present by default, but may be excluded under specific circumstances.

Here’s a rundown of what you can customize:

Netty

Netty is the NIO framework that powers the driver’s networking layer.

It is a required dependency, but we provide a a shaded JAR that relocates it to a different Java package; this is useful to avoid dependency hell if you already use Netty in another part of your application.

Typesafe config

Typesafe config is used for our file-based configuration.

It is a required dependency if you use the driver’s built-in configuration loader, but this can be completely overridden with your own implementation, that could use a different framework or an ad-hoc solution.

In that case, you can exclude the dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.datastax.oss</groupId>
  <artifactId>java-driver-core</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.1</version>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>com.typesafe</groupId>
      <artifactId>config</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

Native libraries

The driver performs native calls with JNR. This is used in two cases:

to access a microsecond-precision clock in timestamp generators;
to get the process ID when generating UUIDs.

In both cases, this is completely optional; if system calls are not available on the current platform, or the libraries fail to load for any reason, the driver falls back to pure Java workarounds.

If you don’t want to use system calls, or already know (from looking at the driver’s logs) that they are not available on your platform, you can exclude the following dependencies:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.datastax.oss</groupId>
  <artifactId>java-driver-core</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.1</version>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>com.github.jnr</groupId>
      <artifactId>jnr-ffi</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>com.github.jnr</groupId>
      <artifactId>jnr-posix</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

Compression libraries

The driver supports compression with either LZ4 or Snappy.

These dependencies are optional; you have to add them explicitly in your application in order to enable compression. See the Compression page for more details.

Metrics

The driver exposes metrics through the Dropwizard library.

The dependency is declared as required, but metrics are optional. If you’ve disabled all metrics, and never call Session.getMetrics anywhere in your application, you can remove the dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.datastax.oss</groupId>
  <artifactId>java-driver-core</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.1</version>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>io.dropwizard.metrics</groupId>
      <artifactId>metrics-core</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

In addition, “timer” metrics use HdrHistogram to record latency percentiles. At the time of writing, these metrics are: cql-requests, throttling.delay and cql-messages; you can also identify them by reading the comments in the configuration reference (look for “exposed as a Timer”).

If all of these metrics are disabled, you can remove the dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.datastax.oss</groupId>
  <artifactId>java-driver-core</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.1</version>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>org.hdrhistogram</groupId>
      <artifactId>HdrHistogram</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

Documenting annotations

The driver team uses annotations to document certain aspects of the code:

thread safety with Java Concurrency in Practice annotations @Immutable, @ThreadSafe, @NotThreadSafe and @GuardedBy;
nullability with SpotBugs annotations @Nullable and @NonNull.

This is mostly used during development; while these annotations are retained in class files, they serve no purpose at runtime. If you want to minimize the number of JARs in your classpath, you can exclude them:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.datastax.oss</groupId>
  <artifactId>java-driver-core</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.1</version>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>com.github.stephenc.jcip</groupId>
      <artifactId>jcip-annotations</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>com.github.spotbugs</groupId>
      <artifactId>spotbugs-annotations</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

However, there is one case when excluding those dependencies won’t work: if you use annotation processing in your build, the Java compiler scans the entire classpath – including the driver’s classes – and tries to load all declared annotations. If it can’t find the class for an annotation, you’ll get a compiler error:

error: cannot access ThreadSafe
  class file for net.jcip.annotations.ThreadSafe not found
1 error

The workaround is to keep the dependencies.

Sometimes annotation scanning can be triggered involuntarily, if one of your dependencies declares a processor via the service provider mechanism (check the META-INF/services directory in the JARs). If you are sure that you don’t need any annotation processing, you can compile with the -proc:none option and still exclude the dependencies.

Mandatory dependencies

The remaining core driver dependencies are the only ones that are truly mandatory:

the native protocol layer. This is essentially part of the driver code, but was externalized for reuse in other projects;
java-driver-shaded-guava, a shaded version of Guava. It is relocated to a different package, and only used by internal driver code, so it should be completely transparent to third-party code;
the SLF4J API for logging.