Apex 4.2.2 PDF Printing with Apex 2.0 Listener

Question

We recently installed Apex 4.2 with the Apex 2.0 Listener and can successfully print interactive reports and classic reports to PDF.  I viewed Mark Sewtz PDF Printing with Apex 4.2.2 and saw how he is using third party tools to format reports.  We have also looked into the Jasper Report Integration Toolkit, but have only got it working on the Tomcat environment, not WebLogic.
I'm trying to download a classic report in PDF format with our logo displayed at the header.  In the print attributes section, there is a section for header.  I've tried adding the following in the header section:
<img src = "http://hr.unm.edu/common/images/unm_dept_logo.gif">
No Logo Prints
#APP_IMAGES#unm_dept_logo.gif
Prints in header:
wwv_flow_file_mgr.get_file?
p_security_group_id=3930016164431413%26p_flow_id=106%26p_fname=unm_dept_logo.gif
#WORKSPACE_IMAGES#unm_dept_logo.gif
Prints in header: /i/unm_dept_logo.gif
I've also added the logo in the report region, prior to the columns printing, but no logo downloads to PDF.
Does the Apex Listener only render text?  Is there any way to get the logo to print in the header without using a third party tool?  Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi,
There are different options to include images in your PDF exports. What's important to understand though is that with the PDF export functionality we separate the formatting from the actual data. So the formatting is defined in your RTF or XSL-FO templates and the data is stored in the XML that APEX generates based on your report data. We have several formatting options exposed on the print attributes pages, i.e. you can define page formatting, dimensions, fonts, colors, etc - all of these are applied to what we call generic XSL-FO templates. Those templates are generic in that they can be used with different reports, having variable numbers of columns and variable column names. Those formatting attributes can not be used however with named column templates, such as those that you generate with BI Publisher or those third-party tools I talked about in my Blog.
So if you want to use these formatting options, you need a generic report layout - which you get out of the box using the built-in layout. But you also have the option to create your own generic report layout (see Shared Components -> Report Layouts). When creating a custom generic report layout, you'll get a copy of the built-in layout as a starting point. Once created, you can manually modify this layout to meet your needs. As you edit this template, you'll find a number of #....# substitution strings. This is what APEX uses at runtime to fill in your formatting values as well as to assemble your generic layout based on your result set.
Now one way to include your own image would be to add an image reference to this generic report layout. You can't use the page header or footer attributes on the print attributes page for that because the FOP rendering engine does not understand or translate HTML. It renders XSL-FO. So to add your own image reference, you need to use XSL-FO mark-up. If you want to add an image to your page header, look for the #PAGE_HEADER# substitution string in the "Page Template" attribute of your generic report layout. You should be able to find the following:
<fo:inline xsl:use-attribute-sets="page-header">
    #PAGE_HEADER#
</fo:inline>
Now assuming you have a file stored in your local images directory on localhost, you could add the following external graphic reference:
<fo:inline xsl:use-attribute-sets="page-header">
    <fo:external-graphic src="http://localhost:8080/i/cloud.gif" content-height="scale-to-fit" height="30px"  content-width="150px" scaling="non-uniform"/>
    #PAGE_HEADER#
</fo:inline>
Once you're done with your chanages, save the report layout and edit your report. Go to the print attributes and select your generic report layout and then run your report page and export the PDF. Provided the APEX Listener is able to find this external image reference, it will now be included above your report in your PDF document.
Regards,
Marc