This tutorial describes how to connect to Zoho Books.

In this walkthrough:

• Requirements
• General information
• Creating ZohoBooksConnection
• Opening connection
• Closing connection
• Modifying connection

Requirements

In order to connect to Zoho Books you need to have the corresponding account, dotConnect for Zoho Books installed and IDE running. You also have to know the required connection parameters described below.

Note that if you do not use design-time (specifically, if you do not place designer ZohoBooksConnection component from the Toolbox to the form), you have to embed licensing information manually. This is described in topic Licensing.

Required Connection Parameters

To establish a connection to server you have to provide the required connection parameters to dotConnect for Zoho Books. This information is used by ZohoBooksConnection component to connect to Zoho Books. The parameters are represented as a connection string. You can compose the connection string manually or have dotConnect for Zoho Books construct it for you.

The following connection string parameters are required:

• Data Center - if your Zoho Books is hosted in US, Europe, China, India, Australia, Japan, UK, Canadam you need to specify the corresponding data center.
• Refresh Token - a renewable access token. Sign in with Zoho Books, the token will be assigned automatically.

Creating a Connection to Zoho Books

Design time creation

The following assumes that you have IDE running, and you are currently focused on a form designer.

1. Open Toolbox and find ZohoBooksConnection component in dotConnect for Zoho Books category.
2. Double-click the component. Notice that new object appears on the designer underneath the form. If this is first time you create the ZohoBooksConnection in this application it is named ZohoBooksConnection1.
3. Click on the ZohoBooksConnection1 object and press F4 to focus on object's properties.
4. Enter the required connection string parameters, described above, to the corresponding boxes.
5. Notice that as you assign values to these properties the ConnectionString property is automatically updated to reflect your settings. Now it contains something like Refresh Token=1000.a6fde76542bfbb5244a7e539d4390e72.87e34ea57023c2d0e7dcb9ce55e3e7f.
6. If necessary, click the Advanced button and configure other connection string parameters. You can find the description of these connection string parameters in the ZohoBooksConnection.ConnectionString topic.

Run time creation

You can also configure a connection at run-time by setting its ConnectionString property (note that you have to add references to Devart.Data.ZohoBooks.dll, Devart.Data.SqlShim.dll, and Devart.Data.dll assemblies):

ZohoBooksConnection1.ConnectionString = Refresh Token=1000.a6fde76542bfbb5244a7e539d4390e72.87e34ea57023c2d0e7dcb9ce55e3e7f;

ZohoBooksConnection1.ConnectionString = Refresh Token=1000.a6fde76542bfbb5244a7e539d4390e72.87e34ea57023c2d0e7dcb9ce55e3e7f

Using connection string builder

If you decide to setup connection by assigning values to several properties, consider using ZohoBooksConnectionStringBuilder class. It has all of the possible connection settings exposed as properties, thus allowing to customize the connection at full extent.

ZohoBooksConnectionStringBuilder connectionStringBuilder = new ZohoBooksConnectionStringBuilder();


ZohoBooksConnection myConnection = new ZohoBooksConnection(connectionStringBuilder.ConnectionString);

Dim connectionStringBuilder As ZohoBooksConnectionStringBuilder = New ZohoBooksConnectionStringBuilder


Dim myConnection As ZohoBooksConnection = New ZohoBooksConnection(connectionStringBuilder.ConnectionString)

Notice that in this example we used ZohoBooksConnection constructor that accepts connection string as argument.

For the information on arguments allowed in the connection string, refer to the description of the ZohoBooksConnection.ConnectionString property.

Creating Connection in Server Explorer

To create a Server Explorer connection, you just need to:

1. Click Connect to Database on the Server Explorer toolbar
   
   
2. If the Zoho Books Data Source is not selected by default, click the Change button.
3. Select Zoho Books Data Source (dotConnect for Zoho Books) and click OK.
4. Click Web Login.
5. In the opened Web Login dialog box sign in to your Zoho Books account.

After this you can browse Zoho Books objects in Server Explorer.

Opening connection

Opening a connection is as simple as that:

myConnection1.Open();

myConnection1.Open()

Of course, the myConnection1 object must have a valid connection string assigned earlier. When you call Open, dotConnect for Zoho Books tries to find the host and connect to Zoho Books. If any problem occurs it raises an exception with brief explanation on what is wrong. If no problem is encountered dotConnect for Zoho Books tries to establish the connection during ConnectionTimeout interval. Finally, when connection is established, the Open method returns and State property is changed to Open.

In design time you can connect to server in few steps:

1. Right-click on the connection object in designer and then click Connect.
2. In the dialog window provide the required connection parameters.
3. Click on the connection object and press F4 to focus on object's properties.
4. If necessary, click the Advanced button and configure other connection string parameters. You can find the description of these connection string parameters in the ZohoBooksConnection.ConnectionString topic.
5. Click Connect to establish connection.

Or you can simply change the State property to Open in the Properties window to establish a connection using the current connection string.

Closing connection

To close a connection call its Close method, or set its State property to Closed.

The following example summarizes aforementioned information and shows how to create, setup, open, use and then close the connection.

ZohoBooksConnection myConn = new ZohoBooksConnection();
myConn.ConnectionString = Refresh Token=1000.a6fde76542bfbb5244a7e539d4390e72.87e34ea57023c2d0e7dcb9ce55e3e7f;
myConn.Open();
MessageBox.Show(myConn.ServerVersion);
myConn.Close();

Dim myConn As ZohoBooksConnection = New ZohoBooksConnection()
myConn.ConnectionString = Refresh Token=1000.a6fde76542bfbb5244a7e539d4390e72.87e34ea57023c2d0e7dcb9ce55e3e7f
myConn.Open()
MessageBox.Show(myConn.ServerVersion)
myConn.Close()

The sample code connects to server, shows its version and then closes the connection. This actually is a rare usage, because in real applications connections are used by other objects like ZohoBooksCommand, ZohoBooksDataReader and others. For more information on this please see corresponding tutorials or reference information.

Modifying Connection

You can modify connection by changing properties of ZohoBooksConnection object. Keep in mind that while some of the properties can be altered freely, most of them close connection when new value is assigned.