Generate multiple interactive communications using Batch API use-batch-api-to-generate-multiple-ic

Create a Watched folder and configure it to use the Batch API:

1. Log in to AEM Forms author instance.
2. Navigate to Tools > Forms > Configure Watched Folder. Select New.
3. Specify the Name and physical Path of the folder. For example, c:\batchprocessing.
4. Select the Service option in the Process File Using field.
5. Select the com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.impl.service.InteractiveCommunicationBatchServiceImpl service in the Service Name field.
6. Specify an Output File Pattern. For example, the %F/ pattern specifies the Watched Folder can find input files in a subfolder of the Watched Folder\input folder.

Configure advanced parameters:

1. Open the Advanced tab and add the following custom properties:

   table 0-row-3 1-row-3 2-row-3 3-row-3 4-row-3 5-row-3
   Property	Type	Description
   templatePath	String	Specify path of the interactive communication template to use. For example, /content/dam/formsanddocuments/testsample/mediumic. It is a mandatory property.
   recordPath	String	Value of the recordPath field helps set name of an interactive communication. You can set path of a field of a record as value of the recordPath field. For example, if you specify /employee/Id, the value of id field becomes name for corresponding interactive communication. The default value is a random UUID.
   usePrefillService	Boolean	Set the value to False. You can use the usePrefillService parameter to prefill interactive communication with data fetched from prefill service configured for corresponding interactive communication. When usePrefillService is set to true, input JSON data (for each record) is treated as FDM Arguments. The default value is false.
   batchType	String	Set value to PRINT, WEB, or WEB_AND_PRINT. The default value is WEB_AND_PRINT.
   locale	String	Specify the locale of output interactive communication. The out-of-the-box service does not use the locale option, but you can create a custom service to generate localized interactive communications. The default value is en_US

2. Select Create.

Use the created watched folder to generate interactive communication:

1. Open the Watched Folder. Navigate to the input folder.

2. Create a folder in the input folder and place the JSON file in the newly created folder.

3. Wait for the Watched Folder to process the file. When the processing starts, the input file and subfolder that contains the file are moved to the staging folder.

4. Open the output folder so you can view the output:

   • When you specify the PRINT option in Watched Folder Configuration, PDF output for the interactive communication is generated.
   • When you specify the WEB option in Watched Folder Configuration, a JSON file per record is generated. You can use the JSON file to pre-fill a web template.
   • When you specify both PRINT and WEB options, both PDF documents and a JSON file per record are generated.

Configure the Form Data Model of the template:

1. Open the Form Data Model associated to interactive communication template.

2. Select your TOP LEVEL MODEL OBJECT and select Edit Properties.

3. Select your fetch or get service from the Read Service field under Edit Properties pane.

4. Select the pencil icon for the read service argument to bind the argument to a Request Attribute and specify the binding value. It binds the service argument to the specified binding attribute or literal value, which is passed to the service as an argument to fetch details associated with the specified value from the data source.

   
   In this example, the id argument takes the value of the id attribute of the user profile and passes it as an argument to the read service. It reads and returns values of associated properties from the employee data model object for the specified id. So, if you specify 00250 in the id field in the form, the read service reads details of the employee with 00250 employee id.

   

5. Save properties and Form Data Model.

Configure value for Request Attribute:

1. Create a .json file on your file system and open it for editing.

2. Create a JSON array and specify the primary attribute so you can fetch data from Form Data Model. For example, the following JSON requests FDM to send data of records where id is 27126 or 27127:

   code language-json
   [ { "id": 27126 }, { "id": 27127 } ]

3. Save and close the file.

Create a Watched folder and configure it to use the Batch API service:

1. Log in to AEM Forms author instance.
2. Navigate to Tools > Forms > Configure Watched Folder. Select New.
3. Specify the Name and physical Path of the folder. For example, c:\batchprocessing.
4. Select the Service option in the Process File Using field.
5. Select the com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.impl.service.InteractiveCommunicationBatchServiceImpl service in the Service Name field.
6. Specify an Output File Pattern. For example, the %F/ pattern specifies the Watched Folder can find input files in a subfolder of the Watched Folder\input folder.

Configure advanced parameters:

1. Open the Advanced tab and add the following custom properties:

   table 0-row-3 1-row-3 2-row-3 3-row-3 4-row-3 5-row-3
   Property	Type	Description
   templatePath	String	Specify path of the interactive communication template to use. For example, /content/dam/formsanddocuments/testsample/mediumic. It is a mandatory property.
   recordPath	String	Value of the recordPath field helps set name of an interactive communication. You can set path of a field of a record as value of the recordPath field. For example, if you specify /employee/Id, the value of id field becomes name for corresponding interactive communication. The default value is a random UUID.
   usePrefillService	Boolean	Set the value to True. The default value is false. When the value is set to true, the Batch API reads data from the configured Form Data Model and fills it to the interactive communication. When usePrefillService is set to true, input JSON data (for each record) is treated as FDM Arguments.
   batchType	String	Set value to PRINT, WEB, or WEB_AND_PRINT. The default value is WEB_AND_PRINT.
   locale	String	Specify the locale of output interactive communication. The out-of-the-box service does not use the locale option, but you can create a custom service to generate localized interactive communications. The default value is en_US.

2. Select Create.

Use the created watched folder to generate interactive communication:

1. Open the Watched Folder. Navigate to the input folder.

2. Create a folder in the input folder. Place the JSON file created in Step 2 in the newly created folder.

3. Wait for the Watched Folder to process the file. When the processing starts, the input file and subfolder that contains the file are moved to the staging folder.

4. Open the output folder so you can view the output:

   • When you specify the PRINT option in Watched Folder Configuration, PDF output for the interactive communication is generated.
   • When you specify the WEB option in Watched Folder Configuration, a JSON file per record is generated. You can use the JSON file to pre-fill a web template.
   • When you specify both PRINT and WEB options, both PDF documents and a JSON file per record are generated.

Log in to your AEM instance and create an Interactive Communication. To use the interactive communication mentioned in the sample code given below, click here.

Build and deploy an AEM Project using Apache Maven on your AEM instance.

Add AEM Forms Client SDK version 6.0.12 or later in the dependencies list of POM file of your AEM project. For example,

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.adobe.aemfd</groupId>
        <artifactId>aemfd-client-sdk</artifactId>
        <version>6.0.122</version>
    </dependency>

Open the Java™ project, create a .java file, for example, CCMBatchServlet.java. Add the following code to the file:

        package com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.integration;

        import java.io.File;
        import java.io.FileInputStream;
        import java.io.FileOutputStream;
        import java.io.IOException;
        import java.io.InputStream;
        import java.io.PrintWriter;
        import java.util.List;
        import javax.servlet.Servlet;
        import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;
        import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletRequest;
        import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletResponse;
        import org.apache.sling.api.servlets.SlingAllMethodsServlet;
        import org.json.JSONArray;
        import org.json.JSONObject;
        import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Component;
        import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Reference;

        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.builder.BatchConfigBuilder;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.factory.BatchComponentBuilderFactory;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.model.BatchConfig;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.model.BatchInput;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.model.BatchResult;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.model.BatchType;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.model.RecordResult;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.model.RenditionResult;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.api.service.BatchGeneratorService;
        import com.adobe.fd.ccm.multichannel.batch.util.BatchConstants;
        import java.util.Date;


        @Component(service=Servlet.class,
        property={
                "sling.servlet.methods=GET",
                "sling.servlet.paths="+ "/bin/batchServlet"
        })
        public class CCMBatchServlet extends SlingAllMethodsServlet {

            @Reference
            private BatchGeneratorService batchGeneratorService;
            @Reference
            private BatchComponentBuilderFactory batchBuilderFactory;
            public void doGet(SlingHttpServletRequest req, SlingHttpServletResponse resp) {
                try {
                    executeBatch(req,resp);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
            private void executeBatch(SlingHttpServletRequest req, SlingHttpServletResponse resp) throws Exception {
                int count = 0;
                JSONArray inputJSONArray = new JSONArray();
                String filePath = req.getParameter("filePath");
                InputStream is = new FileInputStream(filePath);
                String data = IOUtils.toString(is);
                try {
                    // If input file is json object, then create json object and add in json array, if not then try for json array
                    JSONObject inputJSON = new JSONObject(data);
                    inputJSONArray.put(inputJSON);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    try {
                        // If input file is json array, then iterate and add all objects into inputJsonArray otherwise throw exception
                        JSONArray inputArray = new JSONArray(data);
                        for(int i=0;i<inputArray.length();i++) {
                            inputJSONArray.put(inputArray.getJSONObject(i));
                        }
                    } catch (Exception ex) {
                        throw new Exception("Invalid JSON Data. File name : " + filePath, ex);
                    }
                }
                BatchInput batchInput = batchBuilderFactory.getBatchInputBuilder().setData(inputJSONArray).setTemplatePath("/content/dam/formsanddocuments/[path of the interactive communcation]").build();
                BatchConfig batchConfig = batchBuilderFactory.getBatchConfigBuilder().setBatchType(BatchType.WEB_AND_PRINT).build();
                BatchResult batchResult = batchGeneratorService.generateBatch(batchInput, batchConfig);
                List<RecordResult> recordList = batchResult.getRecordResults();
                JSONObject result = new JSONObject();
                for (RecordResult recordResult : recordList) {
                    String recordId = recordResult.getRecordID();
                    for (RenditionResult renditionResult : recordResult.getRenditionResults()) {
                        if (renditionResult.isRecordPassed()) {
                            InputStream output = renditionResult.getDocumentStream().getInputStream();
                            result.put(recordId +"_"+renditionResult.getContentType(), output);

                            Date date= new Date();
                            long time = date.getTime();

                            // Print output
                            if(getFileExtension(renditionResult.getContentType()).equalsIgnoreCase(".json")) {
                                File file = new File(time + getFileExtension(renditionResult.getContentType()));
                                copyInputStreamToFile(output, file);
                            } else
                            {
                                File file = new File(time + getFileExtension(renditionResult.getContentType()));
                                copyInputStreamToFile(output, file);
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
                PrintWriter writer = resp.getWriter();
                JSONObject resultObj = new JSONObject();
                resultObj.put("result", result);
                writer.write(resultObj.toString());
            }


            private static void copyInputStreamToFile(InputStream inputStream, File file)
                    throws IOException {

                    try (FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(file)) {

                        int read;
                        byte[] bytes = new byte[1024];

                        while ((read = inputStream.read(bytes)) != -1) {
                            outputStream.write(bytes, 0, read);
                        }

                    }

                }


            private String getFileExtension(String contentType) {
                if (contentType.endsWith(BatchConstants.JSON)) {
                    return ".json";
                } else return ".pdf";
            }


        }

In the above code, replace the template path (setTemplatePath) with the path of your template and set value of the setBatchType API:

• When you specify the PRINT option PDF, output for the interactive communication is generated.
• When you specify the WEB option, a JSON file per record is generated. You can use the JSON file to pre-fill a web template.
• When you specify both PRINT and WEB options, both PDF documents and a JSON file per record are generated.

Use maven to deploy the updated code to your AEM instance.

To generate the interactive communication, invoke the batch API. The batch API prints returns a stream of PDF and .json files depending on the number of records. You can use the JSON file to pre-fill a web template. If you use the above code, the API is deployed at http://localhost:4502/bin/batchServlet. The code prints and returns a stream of a PDF and a JSON files.