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A HowTo for generating PDF documents using Apache FOP in the AppFuse architecture.

About this Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to create a Servlet that can generate a PDF document with data retrieved from our UserDAO object, and a JUnit Test (using StrutsTestCase) that will demonstrate the different stages of the PDF generation process.

The FOP process I am going to describe is producing XML from a POJO entity, passing that XML through an XSL stylesheet to produce a FO XML document, then passing the FO document through an XSLT processor to produce the PDF document.

Please note, the resulting PDF document does not look very pretty. This is because the XSL stylesheet is very basic and does not really apply much FO formatting tags/attributes. It would be very easy to modify the XSL to include images, bold, grey background cells etc.. but this is best left for the FOP documentation to describe.

Table of Contents

  • [1] Create an InputSource for your User POJO
  • [2] Create XMLReader for your User POJO
  • [3] Create XSL stylesheet to produce FO
  • [4] Modify User Service Junit test
  • [5] Run User Service Junit test
  • [6] Create a servlet to handle the requests
  • [7] Modify JSP to call the servlet
  • [8] Environment changes needed
  • [9] Troubleshooting

Create an InputSource for your POJO [#1]

Now let's write our UserInputSource object. This class is used to wrap a SAXSource around our User object, which is then used for generating the XML document in Stage [2].

UserInputSource needs to extend interface FOPSource which should be in src/service/**/fop/FOPSource.java (source attached at the end of this tutorial).

In src/service/**/fop, create a UserInputSource.java file with the following contents:


package org.appfuse.fop;

import org.appfuse.model.User;

import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXSource;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;

public class UserInputSource extends InputSource implements FOPSource {

    private User user;

    /**
     * Constructor for the UserInputSource
     * @param user The User object to use
     */
    public UserInputSource(User user) {
        this.user = user;
    }

    /**
     * Returns the user.
     * @return User
     */
    public User getUser() {
        return user;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the user.
     * @param user The user to set
     */
    public void setUser(User user) {
        this.user = user;
    }

    /**
     * Resturns a Source object for this object so it can be used as input for
     * a JAXP transformation.
     * @return Source The Source object
     */
    public Source getSource() {
        return new SAXSource(new UserXMLReader(), this);
    }
}

Create XMLReader for your User POJO [#2]

Now we need to create the XMLReader which will generate SAX events from our User object. This object should write any data from the User object, we might want to publish in our PDF document.

This class depends on two helper classes, AbstractObjectReader and EasyGenerationContentHandlerProxy that need to be added to src/service/**/fop. These files are downloadable at the end of this tutorial.


package org.appfuse.fop;

//Java
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Set;

//SAX
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

// Appfuse imports
import org.appfuse.model.User;
import org.appfuse.model.Role;
import org.appfuse.util.AbstractObjectReader;

/**
 * XMLReader implementation for the User class. This class is used to
 * generate SAX events from the User class.
 */
public class UserXMLReader extends AbstractObjectReader {

    // User elements
    public static final String USER = "user";
    public static final String FIRST_NAME = "firstName";
    public static final String LAST_NAME = "lastName";
  
    // Role elements
    public static final String ROLE = "role";
    public static final String ROLE_NAME = "roleName";
  
    protected Logger log = Logger.getLogger(getClass());

    /**
     * @see org.xml.sax.XMLReader#parse(InputSource)
     */
    public void parse(InputSource input) throws IOException, SAXException {
        if (input instanceof UserInputSource) {
            parse(((UserInputSource)input).getUser());
        } else {
            throw new SAXException("Unsupported InputSource specified. Must be a UserInputSource");
        }
    }
    
    /**
     * Starts parsing the User object.
     * @param user The object to parse
     * @throws SAXException In case of a problem during SAX event generation
     */
    public void parse(User user) throws SAXException {
        if (user == null) {
            throw new NullPointerException("Parameter user must not be null");
        }

        if (handler == null) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("ContentHandler not set");
        }
        
        //Start the document
        handler.startDocument();
        
        //Generate SAX events for the User
        processUser(user);
        
        //End the document
        handler.endDocument();        
    }
    
    /**
     * Generates SAX events for a User object.
     * @param user User object to use
     * @throws SAXException In case of a problem during SAX event generation
     */
    protected void processUser(User user) throws SAXException {
        if (user == null) {
            throw new NullPointerException("Parameter user must not be null");
        }
        if (handler == null) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("ContentHandler not set");
        }
        
        handler.startElement(USER);

  processUserDetails(user);
        processRoles(user);
        
        handler.endElement(USER);
    }
    
    protected void processUserDetails(User user) throws SAXException {

        handler.element(FIRST_NAME, user.getFirstName());
        handler.element(LAST_NAME, user.getLastName());
    }

    protected void processRoles(User user) throws SAXException {
      
      Set roles = user.getRoles();
      
      if (roles!=null) {

        Iterator iter = roles.iterator();
        
        while (iter.hasNext()) {
          
          Role role = (Role)iter.next();
            handler.startElement(ROLE);
            handler.element(ROLE_NAME, role.getName());
            handler.endElement(ROLE);
        }
      }
    }
}

Create XSL stylesheet to produce FO [#3]

The xsl stylesheet will process the XML generated by the UserXMLReader and produce a FO document. The FO document is processed by Apache FOP to produce the PDF document. Therefore, the XSL stylesheet is where we can modify the FO formatting and style the PDF document.

Place the user2fo.xsl stylesheet in src/web/**/fop/user2fo.xsl. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.1" 
	xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
	xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" 
	exclude-result-prefixes="fo">

  <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" omit-xml-declaration="no" indent="yes"/>

  <!-- ================== -->
  <!-- root element: user -->
  <!-- ================== -->

  <xsl:template name="user" match="user">

    <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
      <fo:layout-master-set>
        <fo:simple-page-master master-name="simpleA4" page-height="29.7cm" 
	page-width="21cm" margin-top="2cm" margin-bottom="2cm" margin-left="2cm" margin-right="2cm">
          <fo:region-body/>				
        </fo:simple-page-master>
      </fo:layout-master-set>

      <fo:page-sequence master-reference="simpleA4">

        <!-- START MAIN BODY -->
        <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">

          <!-- Title Text -->
	  <fo:block font-weight="bold" text-align="start" space-after="12pt">
            User Report
          </fo:block>

          <!-- START MAIN TABLE -->
          <fo:block>
            <fo:table table-layout="fixed" border="solid black 1px">
              <fo:table-column column-width="4.3cm" column-number="1"/>
              <fo:table-column column-width="4.3cm" column-number="2"/>

              <fo:table-body>

                <fo:table-row>
                  <fo:table-cell font-weight="bold" padding="2px" border="solid black 1px">
                    <fo:block>
                      First name 
                    </fo:block>
                  </fo:table-cell>
                  <fo:table-cell padding="2px" border="solid black 1px">
                    <fo:block>
                      <xsl:value-of select="firstName"/>
                    </fo:block>
                  </fo:table-cell>
                </fo:table-row>

                <fo:table-row>
                  <fo:table-cell font-weight="bold" padding="2px" border="solid black 1px">
                    <fo:block>
                      Last name 
                    </fo:block>
                  </fo:table-cell>
                  <fo:table-cell padding="2px" border="solid black 1px">
                    <fo:block>
                      <xsl:value-of select="lastName"/>
                    </fo:block>
                  </fo:table-cell>
                </fo:table-row>
		
		<!-- When the apply-templates is executed by the XSLT processor
		     all matching child nodes (from the XML document are processed).
		     So, in our example, any role elements nested within a User
		     will be processed by the xsl:template below that matches on 
		     role -->

                <xsl:apply-templates/>
              </fo:table-body>
            </fo:table>
          </fo:block>
          <!-- END MAIN TABLE -->
        </fo:flow>
      <!-- END MAIN BODY -->
      </fo:page-sequence>
    </fo:root>
    </xsl:template>

    <!-- =================== -->
    <!-- child element: role -->
    <!-- =================== -->

    <!-- If there are multiple role elements nested within the User then
         a tale-row per role end up in the PDF doc -->
    <xsl:template match="role">
      <fo:table-row>
        <fo:table-cell font-weight="bold" padding="2px" border="solid black 1px">
          <fo:block>
            Role name 
          </fo:block>
        </fo:table-cell>
        <fo:table-cell padding="2px" border="solid black 1px">
          <fo:block>
            <xsl:value-of select="roleName"/>
          </fo:block>
        </fo:table-cell>
      </fo:table-row>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
You could place your xsl stylesheet in your service layer if you wanted. We deploy the stylesheet to the WEB-INF/classes dir inside your webapp and use ServletContextResource to load it, so as long as it is visible to your webapp it does not really matter where you put it. But if you move it, you will need to modify the path used in our servlet we write in a later stage.
NOTE: If you want a section for role names output in your final PDF and we had a user that does not have any role names (for example). Your UserXMLReader should write some empty elements for the role names. Else when the apply templates is called, there will be no matching elements entitled 'role' and therefore, no role name content will be displayed in the resulting PDF document.

Modify User Junit test [#4]

To support the execution of the User service level test, we need another helper file. This file (attached at the end) is called FOPHelper.java and lives in src/service/**/utils.

Add the following imports and method to UserManagerTest.java:


import java.io.File;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;

//JAXP
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Result;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXResult;

//Avalon
import org.apache.avalon.framework.ExceptionUtil;
import org.apache.avalon.framework.logger.ConsoleLogger;
import org.apache.avalon.framework.logger.Logger;

//FOP
import org.apache.fop.apps.Driver;
import org.apache.fop.apps.FOPException;
import org.apache.fop.messaging.MessageHandler;

//Appfuse
import org.appfuse.fop.UserInputSource;
import org.appfuse.utils.FOPHelper;


    public void testGeneratePDF() throws Exception {

        try {
            User testData = new User();
            testData.setUsername("tomcat");
            testData.getRoles().add(new Role("user"));
            // set expected behavior on dao
            userDAO.expects(once()).method("getUser")
               .with(eq("tomcat")).will(returnValue(testData));

            user = userManager.getUser("tomcat");

            File baseDir = new File(".");
            File xslFile = new File(baseDir, "./src/web/org/appfuse/webapp/fop/user2fo.xsl");
            if (xslFile.exists()) {
                log.info("xslFile exists");
            }
            File pdfFile = new File(baseDir, "user.pdf");
            File xmlFile = new File(baseDir, "user.xml");

            log.debug("Input: a User object");
            log.debug("Stylesheet: " + xslFile);
            log.debug("Output: PDF (" + pdfFile + ")");
            log.debug("Transforming...");

            FOPHelper fopHelper = new FOPHelper();
            fopHelper.convertUser2PDF(user, xslFile, pdfFile);
            fopHelper.convertUser2XML(user, xmlFile);

        }
        catch (Throwable e) {
            log.error("Error [" + e.getMessage() + "]", e);
        }
    }

Run User Junit test [#5]

Now execute ant test-service. The testGeneratePDF method will execute and generate the 3 files involved in the PDF generation process. user.xml, user.fo and user.pdf (all three attached at the end of this tutorial).

You should see output: 

    [junit] [appfuse] INFO [main] UserManagerTest.testGeneratePDF(83) | xslFile exists
    [junit] [appfuse] DEBUG [main] UserManagerTest.testGeneratePDF(88) | Input: a User object
    [junit] [appfuse] DEBUG [main] UserManagerTest.testGeneratePDF(89) | Stylesheet: ././src/web/org/appfuse/webapp/fop/user2fo.xsl
    [junit] [appfuse] DEBUG [main] UserManagerTest.testGeneratePDF(90) | Output: PDF (./user.pdf)
    [junit] [appfuse] DEBUG [main] UserManagerTest.testGeneratePDF(91) | Transforming...

Create a servlet to handle the requests [#6]

This servlet will take a userName from the HttpRequest object, call the UserDAO to load a User. It then calls UserXmlReader to generate the XML, does the XSLT transformation, and generates the PDF document. During this process, no files are saved to disk.

Add this servlet so src/web/**/action/

{Java2HtmlPlugin package org.appfuse.webapp.action; import org.appfuse.model.User; import org.appfuse.dao.UserDAO; import org.appfuse.fop.UserInputSource; import org.appfuse.fop.UserXMLReader; import org.appfuse.fop.FOPHelper; import org.apache.avalon.framework.logger.ConsoleLogger; import org.apache.avalon.framework.logger.Logger; import org.apache.fop.apps.Driver; import org.apache.fop.apps.XSLTInputHandler; import org.apache.fop.apps.TraxInputHandler; import org.apache.fop.messaging.MessageHandler; import java.io.*; import java.util.Date; import javax.servlet.ServletContext; import javax.servlet.ServletException; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse; import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext; import org.springframework.web.context.support.WebApplicationContextUtils; import org.springframework.web.context.support.ServletContextResource; import org.springframework.core.io.*; import org.xml.sax.InputSource; import javax.xml.transform.Result; import javax.xml.transform.Source; import javax.xml.transform.Transformer; import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory; import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXResult; import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXSource; import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource; /** * Implementation of HttpServlet that is used * to autogenerate a PDF document. * *

View Source

* * @author Ben Gill * @version $Revision: 1.1 $ $Date: 2005/03/12 17:46:09 $ * * @web.servlet * display-name="FOP Servlet" * load-on-startup="1" * name="fop" * * @web.servlet-mapping * url-pattern="/fop/*" */ public class FOPServlet extends HttpServlet { private Logger logger = null; private ApplicationContext ctx = null; private ServletContext servletContext = null; public void init() throws ServletException { this.servletContext = getServletContext(); this.ctx = WebApplicationContextUtils.getRequiredWebApplicationContext(servletContext); } /** * Route the user to the execute method * * @param request The HTTP request we are processing * @param response The HTTP response we are creating * * @exception IOException if an input/output error occurs * @exception ServletException if a servlet exception occurs */ public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException, ServletException { execute(request, response); } /** * Route the user to the execute method * * @param request The HTTP request we are processing * @param response The HTTP response we are creating * * @exception IOException if an input/output error occurs * @exception ServletException if a servlet exception occurs */ public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException, ServletException { execute(request, response); } /** * Process the specified HTTP request, and create the corresponding HTTP * response (or forward to another web component that will create it). * * @param request The HTTP request we are processing * @param response The HTTP response we are creating * * @exception IOException if an input/output error occurs * @exception ServletException if a servlet exception occurs */ public void execute(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException, ServletException { ByteArrayOutputStream out = null; try { String userName = request.getParameter("userName"); UserDAO dao = (UserDAO)ctx.getBean("userDAO"); User user = dao.getUser(userName); UserInputSource uis = new UserInputSource(user); ClassPathResource resource = new ClassPathResource("/org/appfuse/webapp/fop/user2fo.xsl"); byte[] content = FOPHelper.createPDF(uis, resource); response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=user-" + user.getUsername() + ".pdf"); response.setContentType("application/pdf"); response.setContentLength(content.length); response.getOutputStream().write(content); response.getOutputStream().flush(); } catch (Exception e) { throw new ServletException(e); } finally { if (out!=null) { out.close(); } } } } ] !!Modify JSP to call the servlet [#7] To link to the servlet from the main app. Add the following column to the table in src/web/pages/userList.jsp: {{{ PDF }}} test the call to the servlet !!Environment changes needed [#8] __Lib dir / lib.properties file changes__ You need to download and install [fop-0.20.5|http://xml.apache.org/fop/] into the appfuse lib structure. Ensure these jar files are in your lib/fop-0.20.5 dir: *avalon-framework-cvs-20020806.jar *batik.jar *fop.jar *xalan-2.4.1.jar *xercesImpl-2.2.1.jar *xml-apis.jar %%note __NOTE:__ The reason I have listed the jar files above is because I just copied *.jar from the lib directory within the fop distribution. But fop.jar is not actually in the lib directory, it resides in the base directory of the distribution. I missed this, and got compilation errors. {{{body#pageName element.class { background-color: blue } }}}%% In the lib.properties file you should have the following entry: {{{ # # Fop - http://xml.apache.org/fop/ # fop.version = 0.20.5 fop.dir=${lib.dir}/fop-${fop.version} fop.jar=${fop.dir}/fop.jar }}} __properties.xml changes__ You need to add to the webapp and service classpath's: Add this entry: {{{ }}} to paths: {{{ }}} To ensure the fop jar files are in the classpath. Also, add {{{ }}} To path {{{ }}} __build.xml changes__ Add this line to the war target inside package-web target: {{{ }}} Also inside the package-web target add this line: {{{ }}} So you end up with block {{{ }}} which ensures the xsl file is deployed. To ensure the fop jar files are available at runtime. __New files/dir added to AppFuse__ *src/web/org/appfuse/webapp/fop/user2fo.xsl *src/web/org/appfuse/webapp/action/FOPServlet.java *src/service/org/appfuse/fop/UserInputSource.java *src/service/org/appfuse/fop/UserXMLReader.java *src/service/org/appfuse/fop/FOPSource.java *src/service/org/appfuse/fop/FOPHelper.java *src/service/org/appfuse/fop/AbstractObjectReader.java *src/service/org/appfuse/fop/EasyGenerationContentHandlerProxy.java !!Troubleshooting [#9] If you follow these instructions, things should work fine. But here are things to check if it is not working for you: *Ensure the xsl file is within your webapps/appfuse/WEB-INF/classes/** runtime directory somewhere *Ensure the path to load the user2fo.xsl file, specified in FopServlet, is correct (in case you moved it) *Check the webapps/appfuse/WEB-INF/lib directory to ensure the fop.jar file exist there


Attachments:
user.xml Info on user.xml 114 bytes
UserManagerTest.java Info on UserManagerTest.java 7565 bytes
user2fo.xsl Info on user2fo.xsl 3622 bytes
EasyGenerationContentHandlerProxy.java Info on EasyGenerationContentHandlerProxy.java 8758 bytes
user.pdf Info on user.pdf 1239 bytes
user.fo Info on user.fo 1667 bytes
UserInputSource.java Info on UserInputSource.java 992 bytes
FopServlet.java Info on FopServlet.java 4668 bytes
UserXMLReader.java Info on UserXMLReader.java 3538 bytes
FOPHelper.java Info on FOPHelper.java 4988 bytes
AbstractObjectReader.java Info on AbstractObjectReader.java 6979 bytes
FOPSource.java Info on FOPSource.java 302 bytes

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This particular version was published on 06-Nov-2006 13:52:44 MST by BenGill.