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You can create a web-based application that uses Java servlets to invoke the Forms service and render forms. An advantage of using a Java™ servlet is that you can write the return value of the process to a client web browser. That is, a Java servlet can be used as the link between the Forms service that returns a form and a client web browser.
Note:
This section describes how to create a web-based application that uses a Java servlet that invokes the Forms service and renders forms-based on fragments. (See Rendering Forms Based on Fragments.)
Using a Java servlet, you can write a form to a client web browser so that a customer can view and enter data into the form. After populating the form with data, the web user clicks a submit button located on the form to send information back to the Java servlet, where the data can be retrieved and processed. For example, the data can be sent to another process.
This section discusses how to create a web-based application that enables the user to select either American-based form data or Canadian-based form data, as shown in the following illustration.
The form that is rendered is a form that is based on fragments. That is, if the user selects American data, then the returned form uses fragments based on American data. For example, the footer of the form contains an American address, as shown in the following illustration.
Likewise, if the user selects Canadian data, then the returned form contains a Canadian address, as shown in the following illustration.
Note:
For information about creating form designs based on fragments, see Forms Designer.
This section uses sample files that can be located in the following location:
<Forms Designer install directory>/Samples/Forms/Purchase Order/Form Fragments
where <install directory> is the installation path. For the purposes of the client application, the Purchase Order Dynamic.xdp file was copied from this installation location and deployed to a Forms application named Applications/FormsApplication. The Purchase Order Dynamic.xdp file is placed in a folder named FormsFolder. Likewise, the fragments are placed in folder named Fragments, as shown in the following illustration.
To access the Purchase Order Dynamic.xdp form design, specify Applications/FormsApplication/1.0/FormsFolder/Purchase Order Dynamic.xdp as the form name (the first parameter passed to the renderPDFForm method) and repository:/// as the content root URI value.
The XML data files used by the web application were moved from the Data folder to C:\Adobe (the file system that belongs to the J2EE application server hosting AEM Forms). The file names are Purchase Order Canada.xml and Purchase Order US.xml.
Note:
For information about creating a Forms application using Workbench, see workbench Help.
To create a web-based applications that renders forms based on fragments, perform the following steps:
Note:
Some of these steps depend on the J2EE application on which AEM Forms is deployed. For example, the method you use to deploy a WAR file depends on the J2EE application server that you are using. This section assumes that AEM Forms is deployed on JBoss®.
The first step to create a web application that contains a Java servlet that can invoke the Forms service is to create a new web project. The Java IDE that this document is based on is Eclipse 3.3. Using the Eclipse IDE, create a web project and add the required JAR files to your project. Finally, add an HTML page named index.html and a Java servlet to your project.
The following list specifies the JAR files that you must add to your web project:
For the location of these JAR files, see Including AEM Forms Java library files.
Note:
For information about creating the HTML page that invokes the RenderFormFragment Java servlet, see Creating the web page.
You create Java application logic that invokes the Forms service from within the Java servlet. The following code shows the syntax of the RenderFormFragment Java Servlet:
public class RenderFormFragment extends HttpServlet implements Servlet {
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp
throws ServletException, IOException {
doPost(req,resp);
}
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp
throws ServletException, IOException {
//Add code here to invoke the Forms service
}
Normally, you would not place client code within a Java servlet’s doGet or doPost method. A better programming practice is to place this code within a separate class, instantiate the class from within the doPost method (or doGet method), and call the appropriate methods. However, for code brevity, the code examples in this section are kept to a minimum and code examples are placed in the doPost method.
To render a form based on fragments using the Forms service API, perform the following tasks:
-
Include client JAR files, such as adobe-forms-client.jar, in your Java project’s class path. For information about the location of these files, see Including AEM Forms Java library files.
-
Retrieve the value of the radio button that is submitted from the HTML form and specifies whether to use American or Canadian data. If American is submitted, create a com.adobe.idp.Document that stores data located in the Purchase Order US.xml. Likewise, if Canadian, then create a com.adobe.idp.Document that stores data located in the Purchase Order Canada.xml file.
-
Create a ServiceClientFactory object that contains connection properties. (See Setting connection properties.)
-
Invoke the URLSpec object’s setContentRootURI method and pass a string value that specifies the content root URI value. Ensure that the form design and the fragments are located in the content root URI. If not, the Forms service throws an exception. To reference the AEM Forms repository, specify repository://.
-
Invoke the URLSpec object’s setTargetURL method and pass a string value that specifies the target URL value to where form data is posted. If you define the target URL in the form design, you can pass an empty string. You can also specify the URL to where a form is sent in order to perform calculations.
-
A string value that specifies the form design name, including the file name extension.
A com.adobe.idp.Document object that contains data to merge with the form (created in step 2).
A PDFFormRenderSpec object that stores run-time options. For more information, see AEM Forms API Reference.
A URLSpec object that contains URI values that are required by the Forms service to render a form based on fragments.
A java.util.HashMap object that stores file attachments. This is an optional parameter and you can specify null if you do not want to attach files to the form.
The following code example represents the Java servlet that invokes the Forms service and renders a form based on fragments.
/*
* This Java Quick Start uses the following JAR files
* 1. adobe-forms-client.jar
* 2. adobe-livecycle-client.jar
* 3. adobe-usermanager-client.jar
*
* (Because Forms quick starts are implemented as Java servlets, it is
* not necessary to include J2EE specific JAR files - the Java project
* that contains this quick start is exported as a WAR file which
* is deployed to the J2EE application server)
*
* These JAR files are located in the following path:
* <install directory>/sdk/client-libs
*
* For complete details about the location of these JAR files,
* see "Including AEM Forms library files" in Programming with AEM forms
*/
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import javax.servlet.Servlet;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletOutputStream;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import com.adobe.livecycle.formsservice.client.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import com.adobe.idp.Document;
import com.adobe.idp.dsc.clientsdk.ServiceClientFactory;
import com.adobe.idp.dsc.clientsdk.ServiceClientFactoryProperties;
public class RenderFormFragment extends HttpServlet implements Servlet {
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
throws ServletException, IOException {
doPost(req,resp);
}
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
throws ServletException, IOException {
try{
//Set connection properties required to invoke AEM Forms
Properties connectionProps = new Properties();
connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_DEFAULT_SOAP_ENDPOINT, "http://[server]:[port]");
connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_TRANSPORT_PROTOCOL,ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_SOAP_PROTOCOL);
connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_SERVER_TYPE, "JBoss");
connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_CREDENTIAL_USERNAME, "administrator");
connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_CREDENTIAL_PASSWORD, "password");
//Get the value of selected radio button
String radioValue = req.getParameter("radio");
//Create an Document object to store form data
Document oInputData = null;
//The value of the radio button determines the form data to use
//which determines which fragments used in the form
if (radioValue.compareTo("AMERICAN") == 0) {
FileInputStream myData = new FileInputStream("C:\\Adobe\Purchase Order US.xml");
oInputData = new Document(myData);
}
else if (radioValue.compareTo("CANADIAN") == 0) {
FileInputStream myData = new FileInputStream("C:\\Adobe\Purchase Order Canada.xml");
oInputData = new Document(myData);
}
//Create a ServiceClientFactory object
ServiceClientFactory myFactory = ServiceClientFactory.createInstance(connectionProps);
//Create a FormsServiceClient object
FormsServiceClient formsClient = new FormsServiceClient(myFactory);
//Set the parameter values for the renderPDFForm method
String formName = "Applications/FormsApplication/1.0/FormsFolder/Purchase Order Dynamic.xdp";
//Cache the PDF form
PDFFormRenderSpec pdfFormRenderSpec = new PDFFormRenderSpec();
pdfFormRenderSpec.setCacheEnabled(new Boolean(true));
//Specify URI values that are required to render a form
//design based on fragments
URLSpec uriValues = new URLSpec();
uriValues.setApplicationWebRoot("http://[server]:[port]/RenderFormFragment");
uriValues.setContentRootURI("repository:///");
uriValues.setTargetURL("http://[server]:[port]/FormsServiceClientApp/HandleData");
//Invoke the renderPDFForm method and write the
//results to a client web browser
FormsResult formOut = formsClient.renderPDFForm(
formName, //formQuery
oInputData, //inDataDoc
pdfFormRenderSpec, //PDFFormRenderSpec
uriValues, //urlSpec
null //attachments
);
//Create a Document object that stores form data
Document myData = formOut.getOutputContent();
//Get the content type of the response and
//set the HttpServletResponse object’s content type
String contentType = myData.getContentType();
resp.setContentType(contentType);
//Create a ServletOutputStream object
ServletOutputStream oOutput = resp.getOutputStream();
//Create an InputStream object
InputStream inputStream = myData.getInputStream();
//Write the data stream to the web browser
byte[] data = new byte[4096];
int bytesRead = 0;
while ((bytesRead = inputStream.read(data)) > 0)
{
oOutput.write(data, 0, bytesRead);
}
}catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println("The following exception occurred: "+e.getMessage());
}
}
}
The index.html web page provides an entry point to the Java servlet and invokes the Forms service. This web page is a basic HTML form that contains two radio buttons and a submit button. The name of the radio buttons is radio. When the user clicks the submit button, form data is posted to the RenderFormFragment Java servlet.
The Java servlet captures the data that is posted from the HTML page by using the following Java code:
Document oInputData = null;
//Get the value of selected radio button
String radioValue = req.getParameter("radio");
//The value of the radio button determines the form data to use
//which determines which fragments used in the form
if (radioValue.compareTo("AMERICAN") == 0) {
FileInputStream myData = new FileInputStream("C:\\Adobe\Purchase Order US.xml");
oInputData = new Document(myData);
}
else if (radioValue.compareTo("CANADIAN") == 0) {
FileInputStream myData = new FileInputStream("C:\\Adobe\Purchase Order Canada.xml");
oInputData = new Document(myData);
}
The following HTML code is located in the index.html file that was created during setup of the development environment. (See Creating a web project.)
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <body> <form name="myform" action="http://[server]:[port]/FragmentsWebApplication/RenderFormFragment" method="post"> <table> <tr> <th width="344" scope="col">Forms Fragment Web Client</th> </tr> <tr> <td> <label> <input type="radio" name="radio" id="radio_Data" value="CANADIAN" /> Canadian data<br /> </label> <p> <label> <input type="radio" name="radio" id="radio_Data" value="AMERICAN" checked/> American data</label> </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <label> <input type="submit" name="button_Submit" id="button_Submit" value="Submit" /> </label> </td> </tr> </table> </form> </body> </html>
To deploy the Java servlet that invokes the Forms service, package your web application to a WAR file. Ensure that external JAR files that the component’s business logic depends on, such as adobe-livecycle-client.jar and adobe-forms-client.jar, are also included in the WAR file.
You can deploy the WAR file to the J2EE application server on which AEM Forms is deployed. After the WAR file is deployed, you can access the HTML web page by using a web browser.
Copy the WAR file from the export path to [Forms Install]\Adobe\Adobe Experience Manager Forms\jboss\server\all\deploy.
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