Printing - Oracle APEX Best Practices - page 106

When running the print page, you will see Print link somewhere near the report
and clicking on that link will give you a report in the format selected in the
Printing attributes page.
How to debug or troubleshoot
printing issues
My statement is, "Keep it as simple as possible." So when you face issues with testing
the report server, start by taking Application Express out of scope.
One way to make sure that your print server is up, running, and conigured properly
is to set up a static HTML form that simulates what Application Express is doing
internally, that is, posting some XML data along with an XSL-FO stylesheet to a print
server via HTTP and receiving back a PDF document as the response. If this works
properly, you can at least be sure that your print server is working.
Example
The example ile, How To Debug APEX and PDF Printing Integration
Issues: BI Publisher / Apache FOP (Doc ID 454701.1) , can be
downloaded from My Oracle Support:
• Download the attached ZIP file ( testpdf.html ).
• Open the testpdf.html file in a browser and enter one of
the following URLs for your print server installation:
http://servername.domain.com:9704/xmlpserver/
convert (BI Publisher)
http://servername.domain.com:8888/fop/
apex_fop.jsp
• Click on the Submit button.
If this is successful and the report server can be contacted, you
should see a PDF ile document. If not, there is something wrong in
contacting the report server. Check the URL entered for the test to
make sure you have not entered the instance details incorrectly.
Another way to check if the report server can be reached without taking Application
Express in the picture, is to check the outcome of the following PL/SQL block. Of
course, you need to replace the hostname with your own hostname and the port with
your printer server port.
DECLARE
req utl_http.req;
resp utl_http.resp;
value VARCHAR2(1024);