Why cant I connect to cassandra

Question

I have a basic cassandra setup on my laptop, its up and I can connect to it using the command line tools, however in java, the following fails:

Cluster cluster = new Cluster.Builder().addContactPoints("localhost").withPort(9160).build();

Any clues would be really helpful, thanks! The error is:

com.datastax.driver.core.exceptions.NoHostAvailableException: All host(s) tried for query failed (tried: localhost/127.0.0.1 ([localhost/127.0.0.1] Unexpected error during transport initialization (com.datastax.driver.core.TransportException: [localhost/127.0.0.1] Channel has been closed)))
    at com.datastax.driver.core.ControlConnection.reconnectInternal(ControlConnection.java:186)

Solution

Sounds like your cassandra server isn't running. Check that the server is running via the task manager or telnet 127.0.0.1 9160

If you get the below cassandra isn't running:

telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

As for the jdbc library, 1st piece of advice, use the DataStax driver (you can just add a maven dependency), second piece of advice... use maven for jdbc too. Add the dependency into a maven project and then used the code page on the wiki.

Dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache-extras.cassandra-jdbc</groupId>
    <artifactId>cassandra-jdbc</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.5</version>
</dependency>