Configuration and deployment of PDF printing in APEX 4.1.1 using GlassFish 3.1.2 and Apache FOP

Environment: Oracle database 11.2.0.3, APEX 4.1.1, GlassFish 3.1.2 Open Source Edition (Web Profile), Oracle Linux 6.2

Apache FOP (XSL-FO Processor) can be used together with APEX to allow PDF printing of classic or interactive reports. In this blog post, I will explain how you can deploy and configure FOP in APEX 4.1.1 with GlassFish 3.1.2.

Apache FOP can be installed on a Java application server by deploying the fop.war web archive, which can be found in the /utilities/fop folder inside the APEX installation files. However, the fop.war file does not work out of the box on GlassFish 3.1.2.

I faced two different kind of errors in my installation:

1) package oracle.xml.parser.v2 does not exist: this is because GlassFish can’t find the xmlparserv2.jar file which can be found in $ORACLE_HOME/lib.

2) java.lang.IllegalStateException: getOutputStream() has already been called: this has something to do with getOutputStream() being used more than once; I’m far from a Java specialist, but I found a workaround for this problem on the internet.

This is the solution:

First, we need to extract the original fop.war file (I used the jar utility from my Java 6 JDK installation):

$ /u01/app/java/java6/bin/jar -xf fop.war

You should see the following:

$ ls -la

-rw-r–r– 1 oracle oinstall 1792 May 4 12:44 apex_fop.jsp
-rw-r–r– 1 oracle oinstall 7016135 May 4 12:44 fop.war
drwxr-xr-x 4 oracle oinstall 4096 May 4 14:00 WEB-INF

Next, copy the xmlparserv2.jar file from $ORACLE_HOME/lib into the WEB-INF/lib folder:

$ cp -p /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1/lib/xmlparserv2.jar WEB-INF/lib

Now we need to modify the two apex_fop.jsp files in the top folder and under WEB-INF/classes. Add the following 2 lines just before the final “driver.run();” call:

out.clear();
out = pageContext.pushBody();

The full apex_fop.jsp file should look like this:

<%@ page import='java.io.*'%>
<%@ page import='org.xml.sax.InputSource'%>
<%@ page import='org.apache.fop.apps.Driver'%>
<%@ page import='org.apache.fop.apps.Options'%>
<%@ page import='oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLDocument'%>
<%@ page import='oracle.xml.parser.v2.XSLProcessor'%>
<%@ page import='oracle.xml.parser.v2.XSLStylesheet'%>
<%@ page import='oracle.xml.parser.v2.DOMParser'%>
<%
response.setContentType("application/pdf");

XMLDocument   v_doc;
XSLStylesheet v_xsl = null;
String        v_fop;
DOMParser     parser = new DOMParser();
XSLProcessor processor = new XSLProcessor();
// set the encoding for the XML Processing
String        v_encode = "UTF-8";

// get the XSL
v_xsl = new XSLStylesheet(new java.io.StringReader(request.getParameter("template")),null);

// get the XML String from the form which was posted
parser.parse(new java.io.StringReader(request.getParameter("xml")));
// get the XML Document
v_doc = parser.getDocument();

// create an output stream to get the transformed results
ByteArrayOutputStream v_out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
// transform the xml and xsl to get an FOP
processor.processXSL(v_xsl, v_doc, v_out);
// convert the FOP byte array to a string with encoding set above
v_fop = new String(v_out.toByteArray(),v_encode);

//
// Now call the apache FOP processing
//
Driver driver = new Driver();
// set the desired output
// see http://xml.apache.org/fop/output.html for all output types
driver.setRenderer(Driver.RENDER_PDF);

// set the input for the FOP engine
driver.setInputSource(new InputSource(new StringReader(v_fop)));
// set the output to stream to the browser
driver.setOutputStream(response.getOutputStream());
out.clear();
out = pageContext.pushBody();
// process
driver.run();
%>

Now we are going to recreate the fop.war file:

$ /u01/app/java/java6/bin/jar -cvf fop.war apex_fop.jsp WEB-INF

We are now ready to deploy the fop.war file in GlassFish:

- start up the GlassFish admin console (default: port 4848)

- click on Standalone Instances -> your instance

- click on Applications -> Deploy -> local packaged file… and browse to the “fop.war” file (see screenshot below)

- click on OK; “fop” should now appear in the list of Deployed Applications

After this, you can already test your Apache FOP deployment by opening http://<servername&gt;:<port>/fop/apex_fop.jsp in a web browser. If you see a Java NullPointerException error, things are looking good ;-)

Finally, we need to tell APEX where to find the print server:

- log in to the APEX workspace “internal” with the username “admin”

- click on Manage Instance -> Instance Settings

- fill in the Report Printing part (see screenshot below):

Print Server: External (Apache FOP)
Print Server Host Address: localhost
Print Server Port: (your APEX port)
Print Server Script: /fop/apex_fop.jsp

That’s it! Now try to print a report as PDF in APEX; it should work fine!

 

Matthias

 

 

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