PDF Renderer Microservice

The PDF Renderer is a self contained microservice that uses a supplied jasper report to convert an XML document into either a HTML or PDF report.

The PDF Renderer uses the supplied XML data and a named, versioned Jasper report file to generate the output.  The location of the jasper report files is configured using XXX (jar or directory). The name and version of the report to use is specified when the PDF Renderer is called.

Two versions of the PDF Renderer are built:

• The PDF Renderer itself without libraries or microservice infrastructure
• The self contained microservice, which includes an embedded HTTP server (Jetty), all the required libraries and other dependencies and executes from a single Jar file (using Spring Boot)

The PDFs generated are PDF1a format (archival format)

The PDF Renderer is used by the CADS project to generate the PDF equivalent of the paper form. The claim data used in the report is captured by the customer facing application. The PDF is then sent to DRS for processing by the carers allowance claim unit. (The paper forms are also scanned in and sent to DRS).

Releases:

PDF Renderer 4.04

Download the Latest Release of PDF Renderer library here or the microservice (executable jar with embedded webserver) here.

Get the source, release notes, Javadoc API documents

All Releases

All releases are available here

Building the PDF Renderer:

Get a local copy of the code using git clone https://github.com/Department-for-Work-and-Pensions/pdfRenderer.git

The project requires Java 8 (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/install/install_overview.html) and uses gradle to build (https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/installation.html)

Using the PDF Renderer

Call the renderer supplying only the claim XML, transaction id, report name and version.

e.g.

claim.xml

  <DWPBody xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/dwp/carers-allowance file:/future/0.21/schema/ca/CarersAllowance\_Schema.xsd"
           xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
           xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig"
           xmlns="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/dwp/carers-allowance"<
      <Version>0.22</Version<
      <DWPCATransaction id="TEST432">
      <TransactionId>TEST432</TransactionId>
      <DateTimeGenerated<12-07-2014 22:07</DateTimeGenerated>
      <DWPCAClaim>
          <DateOfClaim>
              <QuestionLabel>Claim date</QuestionLabel>
              <Answer>01-02-2014>/Answer></DateOfClaim>
          <Claimant>
              <Surname>
                <QuestionLabel>Last name</QuestionLabel>
                <Answer>Karloff</Answer>
              </Surname>
  ...
  ...
  </DWPBody<

Configuration Parameters

Default Configuration file

icc.path=/config/AdobeRGB1998.icc
jasper.local.folder=../XXpdfReports/build/resources/main/config
jasper.jarfile.folder=./pdfreports
jasper.jarfile.subfolder=config
env.name=lab
server.port=9010
metrics.name=p1
metrics.frequency=1
metrics.slf4j=true
health.logging=true
health.logging.frequency=1
spring.config.name=application-info.properties
spring.config.location=/config/

all parameters are optional, except jasper.jarfile.folder

All parameters can be overridden on the command line using. e.g.

java -jar p1-4.03-SNAPSHOT-full.jar --jasper.jarfile.folder=./pdfreports-1.06-SNAPSHOT.jar

Starting the pdfRender

java -jar <jar name> --jasper.jarfile.folder=<location of reports>

It logs to the console unless you override the logging config, and the last two lines when it starts successfully are:

2016-07-08 09:28:20,136 - \[INFO\] - \[main\] -
o.s.b.c.e.j.JettyEmbeddedServletContainer - Jetty started on port(s)
9010 (http/1.1)

2016-07-08 09:28:20,143 - \[INFO\] - \[main\] -
controllers.PdfServiceApplication - Started PdfServiceApplication in
5.316 seconds (JVM running for 5.901)

Stopping the pdfRenderer

Ctrl-C

Is it alive

To check if the pdfRenderer is alive and reachable, it can be pinged at:

http://<server name>:<server.port>/ping, e.g.

    http://localhost:9010/ping

The health check can be reached at:

http://<server name>:<server.port>/report/health e.g.

    http://localhost:9010/report/health

which returns a json response, e.g.

json

{
    "application name" : "p1",
    "version" : "4.03",
    "name" : "p1-check",
    "Result" : {
        "isHealthy" : "true",
        "message" : "",
        "error" : ""
    }
}

Use PDF Renderer to render a PDF file :

which returns a PDF as a byte stream.

Use PDF Renderer to render a HTML file

which returns HTML as a byte stream 

Testing the PDF Renderer

There are a number of tools that can be used to make sending specific requests to the service easier:

Advanced REST Client (for chrome - https://advancedrestclient.com/), which is friendly and easy to use, and can save the responses to a file

Example

and click send, the response will come back as HTML

similarly if you change the url to http://127.0.0.1:9010/pdf

Example Files

claim.xml

claim.html

claim.pdf

Reports

The reports used to render the data are included in the pdfRenderer executable jar (/config/<report version>/...)

The version required is determined from the <DWPBody>/<Version> tag.

Logging

The pdfRenderer uses logback for itself and the spring boot wrapper (which is used to make the jar self contained and executable).

The logging configuration can be overridden by setting the system property to the new configuration location (typically logback.xml), e.g.

        java -Dlogback.configurationFile=/path/to/config.xml for the application logging

<TODO> for the spring boot logging

Next Steps

The code is awaiting code review, so there will be some tidying up to make it clearer, more consistent and adhere to best practices etc.

The end artefact will be made more general and more flexible, e.g being able to define the reports externally