Before you begin configuring document specifications and
generating documents, you must initialize the Java™ API and select a logging method.
Procedure
- Required: Select a method for initializing
the API:
- Automatically: The %RPE_HOME% environment
variable is used to identify the path to the config and source directories
in the Rational® Publishing Engine installation.
- Programmatically: Set the path to
the config and source directories
in the Rational Publishing Engine installation
by using AppUtils.setProductHome(path).
Tip: Initializing the API programmatically is the
recommended method. When you initialize the API programmatically,
the application is shipped with config and source directories
rather than relying on the directories in the Rational Publishing Engine installation.
- Optional: Select a method for logging:
- Configure Rational Publishing Engine to
use the logger in your application:
- Create an instance of the org.apache.commons.logging.Log class
for logging.
- If your application does not use common logging, you can provide Rational Publishing Engine with
an instance of a class implementing the IRPELogger interface.
This class transforms Rational Publishing Engine logging
calls into calls to the logging for your application.
- Configure the Rational Publishing Engine logger
in your application:
- If you chose to configure the Rational Publishing Engine logger
in your application in the previous step, configure the Log4j logger
before using any Rational Publishing Engine function.
- If the log4j.properties file is in the
root folder of your project, initialize the Log4j logger by:
PropertyConfigurator.configure( this.class.getClassLoader().getResource("./log4j.properties"));
- If the log4j.properties file is not in
the root folder of your project, initialize the Log4j logger by:
PropertyConfigurator.configure( new File( AppUtils.getConfigFilePath(), "log4j.properties").getAbsolutePath());
- Optional: Connect to progress notifications. The report generators can be sent notification messages through RPEListener.
These messages are the same messages that the Launcher application
displays in the progress window while a document is generating.