Specifying Src for external graphic in XSL

Question

I am using JSF1.2 framework and converting XML into PDF using FOP engine and XSL stylesheet. as far as string data is concerned, its working perfectly but now i want to embed images in my output PDF. the directory structure is as follows

ProjectDirectory

-src

--resources

---P2O.xsl

-WebContent

--images

---image1.jpg

the following works fine if i place image1.jpg file in d: drive
fo:external-graphic src='url("file:///d:/image1.jpg")'> /fo:external-graphic>

Since i have to deploy this application on production server so i can not set this path there. My question is that what should i specify in "src" to pick that image file from WebContent/images path

Any example/help in this case would be greatly appreciated. With Regards

Fahim Ashraf Fahim Ashraf · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-01T03:58:55

I figured out the problem after a brief search. The main point of consideration is the FOUserAgent which acts the mediator between the application and FOP processor. The FOP processor does not know the root or base path of your application unless it's defined explicitly. To use a relative path for your images, you need to create an FOUserAgent object and specify the base URL for that FOUserAgent instance. In my case, I added the following line (noted below):

FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance();

FOUserAgent foUserAgent = fopFactory.newFOUserAgent();

// This is the important line
foUserAgent.setBaseURL("file:///" + FacesUtils.getHttpServletRequest().getRealPath("/"));

Fop fop = fopFactory.newFop(MimeConstants.MIME_PDF, foUserAgent, outputStream);

where FacesUtils is just a custom made utils file I keep in my project. If you do not have any utils file then simply use FacesContext to get the realPath().

Now basePath will refer to your WebContent folder and any image can be accessed relatively from there. I now access my images like this in the .xsl:

src='url("images/image1.jpg")'

where the images folder lies in WebContent folder.

Specifying Src for external graphic in XSL

1 Answers