Setup connector/j for JDBC

Setting up MySQL driver connector/j for JDBC in Windows

This is basically not a hard task. Make sure you already have the following things installed and configured in your system, (this demonstration is targeted on the latest versions of the components):

• Apache HTTP Server 2.2 (see here)
• MySQL community server 5.1 (see here)
• Java SE SDK aka JDK 1.6 (see here)

If you don't have these components installed yet, you might try taking some online help on how to install and configure those, not hard as well.

Now, to install java to mysql connector, which is know as connector/j, go to this page and download the windows ZIP package. Unzip the archive anywhere in your pc, it won't matter at all. Now, follow these steps:

1. Copy the file "mysql-connector-java-5.1.13-bin.jar" to your java installation directory and place it in "..\jdk1.6.0_21\jre\lib\ext".
2. Now, you have to add this runtime library to your systems classpath environment variable. Go to the properties of My Computer and select the Advanced tab, there you'll see Environment Variables. You will find all your system variables here. Find out the name CLASSPATH and append the location of connector/j i.e. where you just pasted. In my pc, its "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_21\jre\lib\ext\mysql-connector-java-5.1.13-bin.jar". Don't forget to separate this entry from the previous one with e semi-colon. Now click ok and close the dialogue boxes, you are done! But if you don't have the CLASSPATH variable, you need to create it yourself.

That's pretty much all of the work, now we are going to test if it works.

Lets assume that you already have a mysql database named "mysqltest" and you are the "root" user with password "adminadmin" using default host "localhost" with default http port 80, the following code should work then:

import java.sql.*;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Connection conn = null;
        try {
            Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver") ;
            System.out.println("MySQL JDBC driver loaded ok.");

            conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/mysqltest?user=root&password=adminadmin");
            System.out.println("Connected with default port.");

            DatabaseMetaData meta = conn.getMetaData();
            System.out.println("Server name: " + meta.getDatabaseProductName());
            System.out.println("Server version: " + meta.getDatabaseProductVersion());
            System.out.println("Driver name: " + meta.getDriverName());
            System.out.println("Driver version: " + meta.getDriverVersion());
            System.out.println("JDBC major version: " + meta.getJDBCMajorVersion());
            System.out.println("JDBC minor version: " + meta.getJDBCMinorVersion());

            Statement query = conn.createStatement();
            int count = query.executeUpdate(
            "CREATE TABLE test (" +
            "id INT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT," +
            "username VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL," +
            "password CHAR(40) NOT NULL );"
            );
            System.out.println("Table created.");

            conn.close();
        } catch(Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Exception: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }
}

As you see, you are using "DriverManager.getConnection()" method to connect it using connector/j which you previously specified by "Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver") ;" So, make proper changes to test various things. Here, you will get some more methods of connecting and testing.

Well, if this doesn't work for you, then there must be something which is beyond the scope of this post, else "congratulations!".