Reports Sugestion - Data Template Support for Downloadable PDF Reports.

Question

This is something that I miss in APEX reports that I would like to see. Right now I have BI Publisher tied to my APEX install but there are reports I would like to move over but I hate the fact that APEX does not have the ability to use BI Publisher XML Data Templates! It seems like if you have the integration this would be a natural thing to have so you could use complex report and APEX security (as I found a few issues in BI Publisher that are deal killers for running a few of my newer reports directly on BIP). Most of my reports are too complex and would require extensive XPath coding to setup using RTF templates. This just seems like something that would be very useful in APEX.

Answer 1

David:
I should have a whitepaper on this subject by the end of the month.
http://jastraub.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-changes-to-flexwsapi.html
I know this doesn't help you right now so I will describe how it works. Create a Manual Web reference as described on Tyler's blog, except for the SOAP Envelope, using something like:
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:pub="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/service/PublicReportService" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<soapenv:Header/>
<soapenv:Body>
<pub:runReport soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<reportRequest xsi:type="pub:ReportRequest">
<attributeFormat xsi:type="xsd:string">#P2_FORMAT#</attributeFormat>
<parameterNameValues xsi:type="pub:ArrayOfParamNameValue" soapenc:arrayType="pub:ParamNameValue[]"/>
<reportAbsolutePath xsi:type="xsd:string">#P2_ABS_PATH#</reportAbsolutePath>
</reportRequest>
<userID xsi:type="xsd:string">#APP_USER#</userID>
<password xsi:type="xsd:string">#P101_PASSWORD#</password>
</pub:runReport>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
You can hardcode format to pdf if that is all you wish to download. You can also hardcode the userID parameter, reportAbsolutePath, and the password parameter if you wish. Use something like DOWNLOAD_DOCUMENT as the collection name.
Now create a page and create a before header process of type Web service that invokes this reference. The document's binary data will be stored in a node of an XML document in the collection encoded in base64 format. You will need another process that converts that to a BLOB and then presents a dialog to the browser to save the document. You can accomplish with a process like the following, after the call to the Web service:
declare
l_mime varchar2(48);
l_name varchar2(4000);
l_base64 clob;
l_blob blob;
l_size number;
l_xml xmltype;
l_ns varchar2(4000) default null;
l_path varchar(255) default '//multiRef';
begin
l_mime := flex_ws_api.parse_response('DOWNLOAD_DOCUMENT',l_path||'/reportContentType/text()',l_ns);
l_name := 'test.pdf';
l_base64 := flex_ws_api.parse_response_clob('DOWNLOAD_DOCUMENT',l_path||'/reportBytes/text()',l_ns);
l_blob := flex_ws_api.clobbase642blob(l_base64);
l_size := dbms_lob.getlength(l_blob);
htp.init;
owa_util.mime_header( nvl(l_mime,'application/octet'), FALSE );
htp.p('Content-length: '||l_size);
htp.p('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'||replace(replace(l_name,chr(10),null),chr(13),null)||'"');
owa_util.http_header_close;
wpg_docload.download_file( l_blob );
apex_application.g_unrecoverable_error := true;
end;
I hope that helps. Stay tuned for the white paper and sample application.
Regards,
Jason